Category: climbing

Rock sport climbing in Gua Musang in Malaysia, living in the lost place camp site, and Racki’s birthday (December 2025)

From Kuala Lumpur we took a bus to Gua Musang. On the booking website, it said the bus would take five hours. A taxi driver told us that it would take seven or more hours. So we were prepared and surprised when we reached our destination in under five hours.
The climbing crag was at the entrance of a recreational area, was not that high, but looked nice. See it on thecrag.com 🥳
There were basically routes around the whole crag and right through the crag went a tunnel which was the main attraction for none climbing visitors 🙂
During our six day stay, it rained a lot. It was still rainy season so it was not a big surprise. But we climbed the front of the crag on a dry day and inside of the crag were two to three routes that were almost completely protected from the rain by the huge overhangings at the top of the crag.
We met a Malay climber couple and had good fun climbing 🧗‍♂️
This was the map of the area where the climbing crag was located 🗺️
At first we pitched up our tent on an ordinary tent pitch …
… and used the nearby pavilion to hang out and…
… cook 🏡
We had some long…
… and stinky friends 🦨
And when the rain came…
… we moved our tent in one of the huge pavilions 🎊
It was rather spacious 😅
We had a monkey family living with us in the camping area and sometimes they were running and jumping from our roof in the trees and back again 🦘
And once they stole our food 🤣
On Racki’s birthday we wanted to get some drinks and walked to the only market that sold alcohol. That one had a small Chinese temple as well and we bought some small cans of beer for 2,5 Euro each🎐
The shop owner and a customer were very nice and we had some interesting topics to talk about 😀
The guest insisted to give us a ride back to a restaurant close to our camp spot and gifted Racki a birthday cake and a rose on the way there 🍰
Racki’s birthday dinner…
… and birthday cake and beer 🎂

Rock sport climbing at the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur and living in an aquarium (December 2025)

Back in Kazakhstan, we decided to go to Malaysia because there were a lot of climbing routes. More than in Vietnam for example. After we arrived, we found out that one of the biggest climbing areas close to Kuala Lumpur called Bukit Takun (open on thecrag.com) recently became unaccessible.
So we started trying out the other climbing sectors of the Batu Caves area in the north of Kuala Lumpur.
The wall of the Nyamuk (open on thecrag.com) was very beautiful and pretty high 🚀
There were a lot of interesting routes and we met some local climbers who helped us reading the topo and gave us some recommendations. Some routes were to wet from the last heavy rains but we did very good climbing and got used more and more to the tropical rocks and tufa.
Because most of the routes were pretty high, and we could only bring our 50m rope, we had to repell ourselves from bolts so we’d recommend to bring a 70m rope, if possible.
The bolts etc. we’re in very good condition.
Nyamuk translates to mosquito but it was not too bad. Of course we had mosquito repellent with us 🦟
The access to the Volleyball Site crag (open on thecrag.com) was very special. On the photo you see a restaurant and event place and behind that is the climbing crag. The access seems to be possible mostly on weekends and there were contact numbers to book sessions during the week (details on thecrag.com) 🎉
To access it, you have to go through the restaurant and on the roof of one of their buildings everything starts. When we arrived there, it was a nice atmosphere and a lot of climbers were there. After talking to some, we found out that they were from Singapore and enjoyed the cheaper Kuala Lumpur and climbing.
There were easy and hard routes and all in good condition 😁
The cheapest place to stay we found, was the ARK BATU CAVES HOTEL (see it on Google Maps) which was not too far from the climbing crags. It was 70RM on weekdays and 80RM on weekends. We called our room the aquarium because it had no windows at all. It could rain, storm or the world could burn, you wouldn’t notice in the aquarium 🤣
But the walk to the crags was easy and not too long and that was the most important to us. Actually the walk got quite longer because we had to take  detour for one of the very few pedestrian bridges 🙂

Rock climbing with friends and puppies and Io in Tamgaly Tas (September, October 2025)

After a couple of days in Almaty, we went to Tamgaly Tas, our favorite rock climbing area in Central Asia.
In the end, we stayed there about two months.
Our friends Merely and Leon joined us for a week and we did a lot of climbing together  🚀
Leon was not able to find climbing shoes in his size. Size 46 is not so Common in Central Asia.
After some routes in his hiking boots, we thought that maybe climbing barefoot is an option and so we tried it.
And I have to say, it works a lot better than I would have thought.
Leon did really well and climbed a 6c in top rope barefoot ✨
And Merel continued her climbing journey and developed natural movements and a mostly calm mind while climbing.
Just minor panic attacks from time to time. The salt in the soup 😁
Before Leon and Merely continued their journey, we gifted them a sticker and we are looking forward to see them again 🤗
The weather was mostly very good. Only some days the wind got pretty nasty and a few times we had small sand storms 🌬️
We moved into our camp spot that we used the year before for so long. Home sweet home 🏡
And then we met again with Sarah, Maria, Luci, Wouter and Vedinger 🥳
We had a proper camp and such a nice climbing life. Everyday something was going on ⛺
And every evening, we had dinner together, hang around or played some cards and had a good time 🎉
One day, we helped locals to change their flat tyre. They only had that tiny car jack which was not capable of lifting their off road car. They wanted to gift us this tiny jack as reward for helping them 😄
We had a great time together and sometimes even did small operations 🙃
And of course we did a lot of climbing. Sarah and Wouter bought themselves their own shoes, harnesses and helmets and got all into climbing. They learned a whole lot. Sarah did her first leading routes and on one of the last climbing days, Racki and I did another 7a route. Wouter gifted me his almost new climbing shoes because they were too tight for him and we gifted them Rackis old rope 🎊
And Sarah took some nice photos of Racki playing with the puppy stray dogs 🐕
They were absolutely cute 🥰
And me learning to play my guitar called Io 🎸
It was a crazy difficult process but I managed more and to let it sound like a guitar 😁
I was very happy with this move. The beginning looks not that hard on the video, but for me it was the first time to build up the tension like that 🎉