Caving at Gua Tempurung - Grand Tour

It has been one of those back to back outdoor adventure weeks since a couple of weeks ago for me and it couldn't get any better than that. I've finally made it for the Grand Tour at Gua Tempurung, Gopeng last weekend. It is kind of pathetic really because almost all the years living in Perak, I'd never made it to Gua Tempurung not until recently. Oh well, it's better late than never.

Last year, the family and I went for Tour 1 - The Golden Flowstone tour at Gua Tempurung, hence the recent Grand Tour was my second attempt at Gua Tempurung. All in all there are four main tours you can choose from at this cave . There are:

1. Tour 1 - Golden Flowstone ( Level of difficulty (L.O.D) : Easy)

2. Tour 2 - Top of the World ( L.O.D : Moderate)

3. Tour 3 - Top of the World & Short River Adventure (L.O.D : Moderate)

4. Tour 4 - Grand Tour (L.O.D : Moderate to Challenging)

My partner in crime for this Grand Tour is none other than my loyal outdoor partner - FF! Needless to say, this caving activity was just a thought that I have in mind to do when FF decided to come down for a getaway-ad hoc holiday at the family farm. We made it to the counter just in time to join in with about 50 other people for the Grand Tour. Both of us joined in with a group of 30+ Chinese people from Penang and 17+ group of Malay teenagers. If you are coming in a super tiny group like the both of us, it is best to stick near to the guide during the starting point and make yourself noticed to the guide because I can tell you one thing, the guide has no idea on how many people exactly he is going to guide and there are no literal head count going on at the start of the tour. We made our presence pretty loud and clear to the guide by confirming to him that we are a group of two joining amongst the two other bigger groups in the tour.



Throughout the tour, if you are expecting to hear some educational information about history or scientific formations of the stalactite and stalagmite from the guide, you are just going to be disappointed. There are no educational briefings throughout the tour and the only thing you get to hear from the guide is some visual identification from the formations on the wall of the cave that may reflect vivid images of animals or humans. After just about 10 minutes of this type of 'identification' , the group were naturally bored of the briefing and the larger part of us decided to push forward quickly so that the guide will catch on with us and proceed much quicker throughout the tour.

Almost everyone in the group is a pretty fit bunch of people and man, we walked real quick up and down those stairs in the cave. The humidity level was high inside the cave and we were drenched in our own sweats by the first 30 minutes or so of the tour. The part I anticipated the most was to go wading through the knee length water level in the cave. It was dark and my headlamp wasn't beaming so bright because the battery was running dry, so there weren't much 'admiring and looking' going on once you are inside the dark cave. There are some occasional ooh-aahs going about at certain places but that was pretty much it and I noticed that no one amongst the 50+ of us actually  brought along a camera because unless you have a waterproof camera cover, you are good to enter the cave with one.

After around an hour plus of wading through the water and getting wet with small grains of pebbles soaking to the bottom and sides of our socks, FF and I was thinking ," Is this it?", obviously not impressed with the supposedly 'Grand Tour' of the cave. I must mention that the tour gets better only towards the end of it. Soon after, we found ourselves waiting behind another larger group to go down a pretty steep and high slope. Thanks to the boys from the Penang group, they acted as the 'catcher' at the bottom of the slope and going down the slope was pretty nerve wrecking because it was dark and you don't know how far you are going to fall. Right after that, we had to go down a tiny hole with a good help from some boys again and then back to wading in the water we went again. At some point, you really have to crawl, do some low bending walk on your knees or go sprawling head down just above the water surface to get through the tight corridor in the cave.

What seemed to be an endless, wet crawl in the cave came to an end as you begin to see fixed lights from the wall of the cave. The Grand Tour ended after 4 hours later and I suppose it will end much earlier if the group was not as large as us. Overall, I guess that will be the first and the last Grand Tour for me at Gua Tempurung. You wouldn't want to go there again since you are  not really gaining any extra educational values from the tour besides merely going for the wet, dark adventure in the cave. With Gua Tempurung, over and done with, I just have an inkling that the gang may be going after Mulu Cave in the  near future. For that, I really can't wait!

For more info or bookings on Tours at Gua Tempurung, you can contact :

Shahril- +60125549830

Noorzuliana - +60125928952

Abdul Manan - +60195437192

or visit their website at www.guatempurung.com