#Travelogue | The Place Called Kinta, One With the River and Valley
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
We arrived in front of the village school, our agreed meeting point for this activity. I greeted the group leader as soon as I left the car. I had actually met him before, during my varsity days.
The leader's name is Ching Boon Tat, but everyone calls him Ah Tat. I remembered him, because out of everyone that I've ever known, he is the only person I know who has dedicated their life to cave conservation. Back to my varsity days, he was already a member of the Kinta Valley Watch, leading students into caves, recording ecological observations, and doing limestone advocacy and conservation to the public via talks and stories.
A brief exchange later, the rest of the group and I got back in our cars, and made our way towards our real destination -- Gua Anak Tempurung.
//
A stream finds its way from one side of the mountain into the cave, reappearing on the other side. In the cave, we spent most of our time walking in water, our feet submerged in icy cold creek water, the sound of the splashes hitting the cavern walls echoing around us. Looking up occasionally, we can spot traces of silt and broken limestone rocks on the tall cavern walls, marking the water levels when the cave was flooded before.
**The nature of cavern environments are complex, covered with water, full of risks and hazards such as falling rocks and losing one's bearings. It is recommended that any cave explorations are led by an expert guide, and under no circumstances is one without prior training or familiarity can be allowed to enter a cave alone.
Group Leader: Ching Boon Tat (Kinta Valley Watch)
Contact: +60 12-559 9112
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The Journey of A Droplet
With the intention of collecting research material, I entered the cave with an opportunistic mindset. With some experiences in cave explorations, along with my temporary assistant-brother by my side assisting me, everything went smoothly. I even managed to joke: "Don't worry about me if I fall, save the camera first." Thankfully, both man and camera were safe and sound in the end.
After we entered the cave, we gradually left the sunlight outside behind us, only the light from the top of our safety helmets swaying slowly in the dark. The places that the light couldn't reach were pitch-black, and in the instance when light landed somewhere, the cave wall, running water, and stalactites would appear in front of us, like an underground world that appeared only for a brief moment.
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The first thing that the camera caught were those stalactites hanging down from above. Some were slender, some were thick, like running water being frozen in midair, resembling a frozen waterfall.
Rainwater from outside found its way onto the limestone underground through the cracks and crevices, bringing with it minerals into the cave from a very long journey. Droplets fall slowly from atop the cavern walls, returning these minerals to the very place they came from. Drop by drop, nothing seems to change; but over thousands and millions of years, it slowly became how it is today, hanging down from atop the cavern walls. To us, this kind of progress is just too slow; to the cave, it is simply how time passes.
Ah Tat said, limestone hills are actually a secondary skeleton.
These mountains and hills needed the calcium from millions of years ago, formed over a long millennia from the remains of corals, shells, and skeletons of sea organisms. A long, long time ago, this wasn't a hill -- it was the sea. Limestone hills were not formed from lumps of earth -- they are bony and rugged, full of sharp edges and protrusions, like they were nibbled on furiously. They were indeed nibbled on. By water.
Rain water comes together to make a stream, and streams flow into rivers. They gnaw at rock formations. Day after day, year after year, millennia after millennia, millions of years after millions. Just like that, gnawing out caves, digging out subterranean rivers, carving out the heart of hills, forming Malaysia's signature karst formations; the Kinta valley.
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Standing in the cave and looking up at the cavern wall, it was difficult to fathom that everything I am witnessing took millions of years to take shape and form. But all those stones are the true records of mankind, history, and even stories from older times. I looked down to look at the flowing creek water around my feet. To form a limestone hill takes millions of years, so how long has the water that I am presently stepping on been flowing?
My brother, seeing me lost in my thoughts, came over to ask me about the photos I took. "Photos of stalactites, " I said, "and water."
The water has come a long way -- passing through mountains formed by the remains of ancient sea organisms, carrying their minerals into these caves. They became streams, flowing into rivers, before finally reaching the Kinta Valley and its very blood vessels. The Kinta River is one of them -- originating from the Titiwangsa mountain range, cutting through the entire valley, turning these very lands rich with tin.
Its waters pass through the valley, moving salt, terraforming the earth, changing the fate of the very land they rest on. The granite in these mountains and hills erode into tin, following the rainwater to find its way into rivers. Tin is heavier than most sandstone, so upon reaching the valley, with the flow of water slowing down, they eventually settle at the bottom of the river. Layer by layer, upon the riverbed, buried deep in the flesh of this very land.
Nobody knew where it was. Nobody knew for the longest time. Until much later on, when miners arrived with metal picks, along with sifting trays and wooden vats. All the tin that was mined out from the riverbed was transported all over the world, bringing forth wealth, prosperity, shops, rows of buildings, and busy streets. which eventually became Ipoh.
The source of all this? Water. Because the rainwater fell on top of the hills and mountains, dripping into streams that flowed into rivers, carrying silt that settled deep into the heart of the valley.
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Because I am from Ipoh
A droplet landed on my face. My brother yelled from up front to be careful of a hole up ahead. The stream had reappeared from another location, the sound of water bouncing off from inside the cavern wall, like somebody was tapping from afar. Ah Tat is still up ahead and talking, his voice obscured by the sound of water around us, reaching me intermittently -- about Kinta River, about the Kinta valley, and about the stories of the rocks, the stones, and the water.
My brother spoke under his breath as he walked along: "Ah Tat is really an expert." Walking by his side, I answered under my breath: "Actually, he is a master mechanic." My brother looked confused, just like how I looked when I heard the same thing for the first time years ago.
I've always thought he studied geology, or biology. When talking about caves, rivers, and limestone, he was passionate and full of knowledge, like a scholar who had researched the Kinta valley for a long time. I only learned later on that he works as a mechanic. That was back in 2018. Originally Ah Tat and a few other friends were looking to explore waterfalls, but after being introduced by a local friend, they changed their minds to explore the caves in Kinta valley instead. They used their phone cameras to begin taking rough notes for the first time.
I once asked him curiously, why.
Ah Tat answered: "Because I am from Ipoh."
He had been observing the Kinta valley for a long time, because he felt that someone should be watching over the land, recording its stories. He realised that all those places he had travelled and walked past are slowly fading away. Just one bang, a hill will be bombed away. Boulders crashing down, smoke plumbing. The limestone hill that water carved and shaped over hundreds and thousands of ears, disappearing in mere seconds.
"I'm just a lowly person, wanting to record and document it." He's said this to me before. This word -- record -- is the reason behind Kinta Valley Watch's founding, with the hope that before it disappears, the valley is seen, known, and remembered. Ah Tat's mechanic hands are also holding on the record log of the monitoring station; his time wringing screws and walking the caves coming together to form one man's account of his land.
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The droplets continue. One drop, and another. We left the cave entrance, stepping on the stream passing through the cave. It continued flowing, to who knows where. I turned to gaze at the hill, reflecting on something a cave-exploring varsity friend had said:
"They are within reach, but fleeting."
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#Travelogue | The Place Called Kinta, One With the River and Valley
Text: Liew Pei En
Photo: Liew Pei En, Ching Boon Tat
Editorial Work: Yeo Jia Xin
Article Source：《环境保育·那个叫近打的地方，有河也有谷~ 近打河 | 霹雳》；马可波罗#22 《从河口到国土：流动中的马来西亚》
#Travelogue | The Place Called Kinta, One With the River and Valley #Travelogue | The Place Called Kinta, One With the River and Valley #Travelogue | The Place Called Kinta, One With the River and Valley
