The whole reason for going to Gua Musang was to catch the Jungle Railway. The express trains travelled through in the middle of the night. To catch the local train from Kota Bharu meant getting the train at 4AM. So I had decided that the civilised way to travel was to catch the train from Gua Musang. There was an english couple sitting opposite me who had caught the train from Khota Bharu and they slept most of the way. Kind of defeats the purpose. Though I was a bit sick and also was not fully functional. To my great delight the train arrived on time. It also made good time and arrived at Jerantut on schedule. My fears proved unfounded.
The train was a double header. Probably to get up into the mountains, though Gua Musang must be a high point, as for my journey the train was mostly down hill. There was also the great Gua Musang train timetabling sham. When I had checked for the train in Penang, they said that there were two trains and it was too complicated for them to sell me a ticket. This turned out to be a good thing (that they did not sell me a ticket). But there were not two trains. The train to Gua Musang arrived, people got off, some, including myself got on, and it continued on it’s way. But now it had mysteriously become a different train. The people like the brother and sister from England did not need to get off and change trains. In fact, I think that they slept through the whole experience.
Taking a photo from a train is never an ideal situation. Also this train had grubby windows and the sun was in the wrong position. So some of the photos are not the best.
I’ve always though that I need to get off the train lots on these trips. It would be better to take a week and a few hours. As there is only one local train a day, it would be slow going. But you would see so much more. And taking photos from the train just sucks.
This was a typical jungle station. Just a little shelter. You had to climb up from the ground onto the train.
There was only this one set of clearing that I saw. I’d guess they are planting palm seed.
We now started to follow the course of a major river.
The butterflies were especially hard. They were all sitting on the ground in the same place. As the train passed (I was in the first carriage) they took flight. So some quick snaps was all I could manage. There were hundreds, seemed like thousands.
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