The old road into the Cameron Highlands from Tapah is a ride that regulars talk about with a mixture of affection and dread. It climbs from the hot lowlands of Perak into the cool mountains through endless bends, tight and blind, cut into steep jungle slopes, with waterfalls tumbling down beside the road and the trees closing in overhead. It is narrow, it is often wet, and it is used by buses and lorries that take their half of the road out of the middle. It is also one of the most memorable climbs in Malaysia.
South of Tanah Rata, the road passes Ringlet, a small town that is the first sign that you have arrived in the highlands, with a reservoir created for a hydroelectric scheme and the first tea estates on the hills around. The tea plantations are the defining landscape of the Cameron Highlands: rows of bright green bushes covering whole hillsides like corduroy, with workers picking leaves by hand or with shears, and factories where the leaves are dried and processed. Some estates have visitor centres and tea rooms with views over the valleys.
The highlands were named after a British surveyor who mapped the area in the 1880s, and they were developed as a hill station in the 1920s and 1930s, a place where colonial officials could escape the heat. Tea, vegetables and flowers followed, and the area still supplies much of Malaysia's fresh produce. It was here, too, that an American silk businessman famously disappeared on a walk in the jungle in 1967, a mystery that has never been solved and that still fuels speculation.
The climate is cool and damp, with temperatures that rarely rise above the mid-twenties and fall well below that at night. Rain is common, especially in the afternoon, and fog can roll in quickly. The roads are busy at weekends and holidays, when people from Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh come up to escape the heat, so ride it midweek if you possibly can. Tanah Rata, a few kilometres away, has fuel, hotels, restaurants and shops, and it is the main town of the highlands. Try the local tea with scones, a colonial habit that has become a local tradition.