Broga Hills ` the 1st attempt 26/1/12

my parents in law live in Semenyih since the 1980s. when i married mehubby 12 years ago, we practically go back and forth shah alam (where we lived the 1st 7 years of our married life)- Semenyih almost every weekend and in the last 5 years, we've made Semenyih home. embarssingly, through out this years..i've never been up to that recently (hmm... not quite recently actualy, more or less about 5-6 years ago)made famouse Broga Hills which is situated at the border of Semenyih(Selangor) & Lenggeng (Negeri Sembilan). what is even shamefull is that i only found out about it through a newspaper article about ( again) 5-6 years ago*blush*

why is it so special, u might ask...well, hills in Malaysia are mostly (except for the golf courses) surrounded by trees, palm trees, rubber trees, fruit trees, oak trees and all the trees there is to be found in Malaysia up on the hills and mountains here...but Broga Hills, the hills are covered by tall blady grass or is it elephant grass? or locally known as lalang...hence i nicked it Bukit Lalang (bladey grass hills) why hills? because there are about 3 1/2 peaks on Broga hills.

so began my series of coaxing and cajoling the hub hub to accompany me up the hills...sadly ..there wasn't a "jack and jill went up the hills" ever to happen...mehubby was just too uninterested doing the hiking if paintballing is not part of it :P

i even tried my brothers, SILs,  cousins and friends to hike up with me...some were just plain uninterested and some...well if shopping or karaokaeing is not part of it..they're just not interested...:P

when i started doing some researching, i found so many blogs writing about it and these people came from all over the country and some FB freinds even posted their pictures up on the hills which is just around the corner from where we live..hmmm ok may be not quite around the corner but about 12-15 minutes drive from where we live...but still u know it's kind of awkward not ever been even at the foot of the hill and even to know where the entrance to the car park is?

i even asked one of the blogger ( that's i've been following) that's been there to invite me along if she's going to be going up there again(she managed to catch the sun rise the 1st time and thought of catching the sunset soon, she wrote) so i said please, oh please invite me along....hahaha...how pathethic can that be...*blush*blush*

after looking at  pictures after pictures on Fb, reading articles after articles on the newspaper and blogs after blogs about Broga Hills i thought enough is enough..i got sore butts at reading and looking so on impulse, last chinese new year holiday after seeing the kids' butts were all glued on the chairs/ stools playing computers games hours after hours and constantly on Fb...(frankly, fb should seriously be banned...it makes the kids( and 'kids at heart' people) forgot all about the people around them and have no sense of wanting to do outdoors activities..) anyway, after taking them to have a deep at Sungai Tekala i asked if anyone was interested to follow me hike up the hills the next morning and the response was surprisingly encouraging...Mike was the first to say he's interested, after a quick thought and not knowing what to expect Laith agreed to come along and follow the buffalow was Sam...:D

i was really excited at the prospect of finally getting my butts up there after so long and hope to catch the sun rise if possible. from the many blogs i read they said if we planned to catch the sun rise it's best to be at the foot of the hils by 6am hmmm...that's just way too early during school holidays ain't it...anyhow, we managed to get ready and be at the foot of the hills at 645am..which was not so bad considering that hiking up with 3 children aged 11, 10 and 8 in the early hour of a still dark morning would be quite dangerous the first time since it's quite a difficult track up to the foot of the 1st peak i found out later. fortunately, we started out rather late that makes the hike bearable.

 

Hantu Kak Limah's Outhouse, anyone?

very energetic at the start...

halfway through the track,,,,a very tired n grumpy Laith

look down...

No, u don't want to look down...

Frankly it was very challenging even though it's only 1.7km in total of the 3 peaks. it took us (me and laith especially)about 50minutes after taking more than a dozen of huffing and puffing brakes...for the more fitter people, they could do it in about 30 minutes or even less to reach the foot of the 1st peak.

(No) Kit Kat Break....:(

the hike before reaching the foot of the 1st peak

almost at the foot of the hill now

Sam was trying his best...

oopsss.....more butts...:p

the thing was i thought at the end of the track it would just be a breeze walk up to the 1st peak and in all honesty i had no idea that when we finally reached the foot of the 1st hill, we had to do a serious climb up...but...since i've so wanted to do it for a long time...we decided to brave it out...and we did...only problem was in the middle of the climb, sam decided to give up and not finish to the peak however much we persuaded him, he just refused to go on up. as all 3 of us; laith (also almost didn't make it to 1st summit and wanted to stay with sam), mike and me reached the top of the 1st hill. as much as we wanted to continue on (oh btw we've missed the sun rise at this time, in case u wonder ;P)

this how the sun looks like when we reached the top at 7:45am

i decided to abandon our mission as not wanting to leave sam in the middle of nowhere- neither the foot nor the peak of the hill...with people climbing up and going down the steep hill, it would be very dangerous for a child that age to be on his own.

Sam decided to end his hike here...

Mike was the first to reach the top

the very exhausted laith

 

the 2nd peak on the background

we started our journey down with heavy heart but at least we've made it to the first top this 1st attempt.
according to my Android RunKeeper apps we made it up from the parking space to the top and back down again in 1:40:54, average min/km 56:20 & total of 1.59km.
well not bad for a first timer with children in tow...

u ca use the rope or u can also bumpy slide down...it's ur personal choice..

notice the tree behind the kids?

spot anything peculiar yet?

yeah.. it's the whimsical tree of shoes

no idea what to do with ur old shoes, go to broga n hurl it up on the tree...

on the way home, we discussed the plan to finally conquer the hills once again soon...

to be continued to our 2nd attempt...