“MAPS encourage boldness. They’re like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible” – Mark Jenkins, in To Timbuktu

We know beginners to Malaysia usually pop some aspirins before attempting to decipher maps provided by the internet or guidebooks. Don’t blame them. These maps are usually cluttered with too many names and irrelevant routes, all done in the name of being “detailed”.

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Can Google Map solve all your travelling problem in Malaysia? No? We thought so. Zoom in and the whole map is cluttered with a thick maze of irrelevant roads and details – you’ll get lost just looking at it

Peninsular pitstops

Let’s jump right in and cut through the clutter.

Below is a map and locations of all key cities, towns, hamlets and jetties that form the road and public transport services network in peninsular Malaysia. At any one of these nodes, there’s a transit hub where one can hop on taxis/buses to towns or jetties within 200-500km radius.

There are places one can whiz pass 100km in one hour and there are rural areas that eat up a whole day just to cover 10km. Be prepared for these two extremes when travelling around the country.

Highland blockage

On the map, the peninsular looks pretty small. And yet, as early as 16th century, overland travels had given colonial Portuguese, Dutch and English a lot to fuss about. It is still the most asked questions by travellers today.

The thing most guide books and touristy maps missed out is the Titiwangsa Mountainous Range that forms the backbone of peninsular Malaysia. On the up side, this mass of highland effectively fences east and west coast monsoon season from spilling over. Hence, through out the year, the coasts take turn to enjoy sunny and rainy days.

Native highlander – The Orang Asli (left) has called the Titiwangsa mountains home for thousands of years. Today, they are still living in far flung pockets of rainforest and a visit to their tribal villages makes a good holiday story.

However, on the downside, it made roads and rail tracks building a tedious task. Once the traveller understands its topography and how roads and rail tracks are built to compensate it, combing the country becomes easy.

The map below will gives one a good overview of trunk roads and rail lines built around Titiwangsa. Bear in mind, roads that are paved across highland require more travelling time compared to roads on flatlands. For example, it only takes 2 hours’ travelling time to cover KL-Ipoh route (210km) but one will need 3-4 hours for KL-Kuantan (250km) journey because the Karak Highway passes through steeps; not to mention the traffic crawl getting out of east KL from densely populated Batu Caves.

The Titiwangsa range stretches from southern Thailand to Jelebu in Negeri Sembilan state. The highest peak is Mount Tahan (2187m) that sits on northern Taman Negara. Other notable peaks are Mount Korbu (2183m) in east Ipoh and Mount Ledang near Endau Rompin Reserve.

At time of writing, there are only 3 roads that cut across the range, namely East West Highway (Ipoh-Grik-Jeli), Karak highway (KL-Karak-Temerloh) and the latest addition Ipoh-Cameron-Gua Musang Highway which was completed in 2005.

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Special Notice Oct 2008 – We have finally mustered enough fund to self-host after hitching a ride from wordpress.com for 3 years. For the latest posts, articles and to keep in touch with us, please go to our new site www.outskirtoutreach.org. This “On The Far Side” blog’s contents and posts will diminish as we transfer them to the new one; which is a big big heap of work in the next few months. Thanks everyone for your kind support !