HK 01 – Jardine’s Lookout & Mt Butler
It’s become a thing for me, to plan for an outdoorsy activity when we travel anywhere. It sucks to hike (or even try to enjoy nature) in Singapore because of the humidity, heat and mozzies. While this hike we did in Hong Kong nearly killed us and our relationship (just kidding!), I was really happy we completed it after we completed it.
I borrowed this book and decided on Jardine’s Lookout trail because of the promising views. It didn’t disappoint! The Victoria Peak trail would probably be awesome too but Ben & I have been up to the Peak before. I’ll share at the end of the post how to get to the starting point.
Hiking up to the starting point!
This is Ben, totally regretting letting me plan our trip
I keep calm (and clam) and carry on, till the view spoke for itself
Mid-way!
On the top of Mount Butler
The descend is long. Like, really long, till you see signs of life and promise of drinking water.
So we took many, many breaks
How to get there:
– Get to Exchange Square. It is a bus interchange. Located between Central & Hong Kong station.
– Get on Bus 6 or 66. I took Bus 6.
– The journey takes you through Wanchai & Causeway Bay. Once the bus leaves the busy city streets and climbs uphill, enjoy the view for a bit before getting ready to alight.
– Alight at the stop near the cricket club, next to a petrol kiosk. The bus journey took about 25 – 30 minutes at an off-peak hour.
– Buy water from the petrol kiosk, last chance to and you’ll need it. There isn’t a lot of shade to rest under on the trail. Not until you descend from Mount Butler.
– There’s a staircase from the petrol kiosk which will take you up to a street road, Tai Tam Reservoir Road. From there, start walking upwards till you see this wooden archway.
Alternatively, you can skip this by taking a cab. The wooden archway is just shy of the entrance to Parkview, a residential complex.
I found this post to be very informative; I have no idea how far or how long we walked for or what we were even looking at (I’m bad at geography, estimation and simple math calculations). So thank you internet people for sharing!
