'If hell were a mountain, it would look like Mount Kinabalu': a Hong Kong hiker's Borneo blues
Mount Kinabalu is much tougher to climb than it's made out to be, as avid hiker but novice mountaineer Sasha Gonzales discovers
I've been an avid hiker for years, but I've never climbed anything as high as Mount Kinabalu in East Malaysia. Calling it "difficult" would be an understatement. If hell were a mountain, I think it would look a bit like Mount Kinabalu.
Nearly a month after the trek, I still couldn't squat, cross my legs or do lunges without wincing in pain. It hurt to wear heels, and I still had moments where I couldn't feel my toes.
I don't know what possessed me to do the hike. It was the New Year; I happened to be in region at the time and thought, what better way to kick off 2015 than to climb a famous mountain? Mount Kinabalu is the highest point in Malaysia at 4,095 metres and also a Unesco World Heritage Site.
In the weeks leading up to the climb, I stepped up my workout routine and checked out other climbers' experiences online. From what I read it didn't sound too bad, so I didn't think I had anything to be worried about.
Besides, according to all the marketing material I'd read, Mount Kinabalu was ideal for anybody of reasonable fitness - for novice hikers, in fact. So really, how tough could the climb be?
My ride to the mountain began at 6am. It took us a couple of hours to get to the Kinabalu Park headquarters, where we received our identification tags and met our mountain guide. Because I was a solo traveller, I was assigned my own guide, a local Kadazan-Dusun tribesman called Safrey. From here, it was a short drive to Timpohon Gate (at 1,866 metres elevation), the starting point of the trail.