Our newbies friends Shawal and Rostan invited me to come along on their Kemensah tour of the Kemensah Jungle. After hearing him describe the trip, it didn’t take much convincing. Who wouldn’t want to leave the house behind in favor of warm weather, 300 meter peaks, cloud forests and wonderful descend? Typically the trails started off quite a mix of very tight technical trails. Most of them included, often deeply grooved by Mother Nature and the rainy season. As we got down to lower elevation, they usually opened up a bit, sometimes into flowing singletrack
The terrain ranged from rugged rocks to soft loamy dirt to muddy road and the trails ranged from extremely dense forest singletrack to wide open dirt roads and anything in between as we navigated our ways down the hillsides.Our trail starts from Zoo Negara via the Kemensah village until Jinbara chalets. The trails did present which after the two fish ponds, the occasional climb and sometimes we would hike-a-bike up the side of the hill in search of the next epic descent.
One of the big climb you would be pushing up regardless of what bike you had. Although a few of these seemed to go on forever, once we started down again, it was always worth the effort. With limited info about this trail, we made up our mind to explore and hopefully we end up the right way. We found out, actually the trail we choose were like a loop and somehow we end up at the first hill where we started.We always moved along at the group speed, and there was never any pressure to get somewhere at a specific time. When we arrived at the cars, somehow we always seemed to arrive at just the right time.
19 December 08, Putrajaya Critical mass celebrate end up the last ride of 2008, the organizer decided to advance the date of the ride because of the X’mas celebration coming. Afraid, that day the people can’t make it to ride. The mtb gores initially very anxious about the weather that night. It was very unpredictable where some place in Putrajaya raining and some is not. The ‘nothing else matter’ participants gathered at famous mamak’s restaurants, Presint 9, Putrajaya, chatting, hang up with others mtb gores while waiting the rain stopped. Me, Razlan, Zamroni and Zul, join the crowd waiting the rain to stop until about 10pm the rain start to decrease. We start assembled the bikes and the nearly 70 bikers turn up that night even though we all start a bit late about 10:30pm to roll out, the bikers still had a patient to wait the rain to stop. The rides varies from the single speed, mountain bikes, full-sus, hard tail to road bikes hit the tarmac.
The Putrajaya resident who already aware about the bunch of mtb bikers ride at their territory was bikers conscious. It quit hard making a long trail of mtbs because the several traffic lights cut off the trail. From Presint 9 to Presint 8, we paddled slowly to big roundabout (Persiaran Perdana) at the governments offices. It was slow step where the road was quit busy until we all reach at the highway (Lebuh Wadi Ehsan) to PICC. Once we reach the highway the road was completely empty of cars and the bikers start to speed up. The road is about 5 km stretch of ups and downs road to PICC. Once we all reach PICC the group stop and had a break to gather back the crowd. There, I had quit a long break because I was at the front pack once arrived. It was fun to catch up the old stories where we were there last month. From the PICC, there was a straight road along the government building boulevard. This was the most exciting road to ride on. It was very ‘no stress’ ride where we rode with joy and snap some pictures while riding. The view was stunning where with tall, bright, different shapes of building. This was the heart of Putrajaya. That night the middle of the road was closed temporarily due to construct the stages, stalls, Bike Park and the half pipe for the tomorrow BMX event.
We headed to Presint 9 where we started rolled. Most mtb bikers had their break and same time continued mingled with other mtb bikers at the mamak restaurants. We had our refreshment and back home about 12:30pm. This riding event is perfect for those who like to begin and understand what the pleasure from the pain of cycling is.
