Kelantan and my trip to Gunong Tahan
John Waterstradt, a naturalist who had previously ascended Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, published this detailed account of his 1901–1902 expedition to Gunong Tahan in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol. 37, January 1902). Writing from the Kelantan side of the Malay Peninsula under Siamese suzerainty, Waterstradt documents a seven-month ordeal of repeated failed ascents, logistical collapse, and near-starvation, ultimately reaching the summit region and confirming the mountain’s structure, hydrology, and accessibility. The account serves as both a naturalist’s field report and a vivid ethnographic record of early twentieth-century Kelantan under Siamese influence.
Summary
Waterstradt undertook his expedition to compare the fauna of Gunong Tahan with that of Kinabalu, choosing the Kelantan route after previous expeditions by Ridley, Davidson, and Skeat had failed from the Pahang side, largely due to inability to secure food supplies. His journey was characterised by a series of escalating difficulties: the dry-season Kelantan River was nearly dried up, forcing him to abandon large house-boats at the rapids below Quala Lebeh; the Aring River was choked with rapids (approximately ten per hour); and at every stage he had to negotiate with successive gangs of boatmen who refused to travel beyond the next village. His first attempt, via the Aring and a tributary called Sungei Tamu, led him to a peak of 5,500 feet which he initially mistook for Tahan before the Sakai guides confirmed it was a separate mountain entirely, separated from the true Tahan by a deep chasm with sheer rock walls.
The second and successful approach came via the Galas River to the Chinese gold-mining village of Pulai, from which he crossed the Tulang Rabong range and descended to the Relai River, a tributary of the Lebeh, before ascending from that side. This route proved the most practicable, and he established a base camp at approximately 5,000 feet, remaining eighteen days in the summit region. The mountain, he determined, consisted of three parallel ranges running roughly east to west, the central one being the highest, with the Relai and branches of the Aring rising from its Kelantan face and the Kechau, Tahan, and possibly a branch of the Tembeling from its Pahang face. The Pahang side, he concluded, was far more precipitous and would require provisions to be carried a much greater distance, explaining the failures of earlier expeditions.
Throughout the narrative, Waterstradt interweaves natural history observations—bird collections, orchid gathering, elephant tracks, tiger encounters, limestone cave snails—with detailed descriptions of the human landscape: the Siamese-imposed Rajah, the floating bamboo-raft villages, the Sakai head-hunters’ descendants, the Chinese gold-mining kongsis at Pulai, and the rattan-farming system of the Rajah. The account is unflinching in its depiction of physical suffering: leech infestations, barefoot travel over thorns, nights at 50°F in inadequate palm-leaf shelters, and the desperate final descent in which he and his exhausted Malays subsisted on dynamite-fished small fish and young palm shoots for four days before reaching the Aring village.
Key Findings
- The entire expedition lasted seven months rather than the planned three, with Waterstradt making at least three separate attempts to reach the summit from different approaches (Aring, Galas/Tulang Rabong, and finally Relai).
- Gunong Tahan comprises three parallel mountain ranges running approximately east to west, the central range being the highest; the mountain is composed almost entirely of white quartz.
- Rivers sourced from the summit region include the Relai and two branches of the Aring on the Kelantan side, and the Kechau, Tahan, and possibly a branch of the Tembeling on the Pahang side; streams originating above 4,000 feet had discoloured, swamp-like water, while those below 4,000 feet had clear water.
- Waterstradt named the Lama Falls (a 300-foot waterfall on the Tahan River) and Bukit Gajah (a high ridge forming the Pahang–Kelantan boundary, frequented by elephants).
- The village of Pulai on the Ulu Galas contained a couple of hundred inhabitants, nearly all Chinese, who had transitioned from gold mining to paddy cultivation as alluvial returns diminished; Chinese miners reported earning approximately 75 cents per day.
- Kota Bahru, the capital of Kelantan, contained approximately 20,000 inhabitants; the Rajah, a young man of about thirty-five installed by the Siamese in preference to the rightful heir, was constructing a zoological garden and building roads at Siamese instigation.
Conclusion
Waterstradt’s definitive contribution is the confirmation that Gunong Tahan is most readily accessible from the Kelantan side via the Relai or Aring rivers, and that the precipitous Pahang face—likely the source of the mountain’s name—explains the repeated failures of earlier expeditions. His account establishes the mountain’s tripartite structure, its hydrological boundaries, and the practical logistics of any future ascent, while simultaneously providing one of the most detailed surviving descriptions of Kelantan’s interior ecology, its Siamese-administered political structure, and the diverse communities (Malay, Sakai, Chinese) who inhabited its river valleys at the turn of the twentieth century.
Context
- Waterstradt was a professional naturalist (not a colonial administrator) operating in Kelantan, which at this period was a Siamese vassal state with a resident Siamese Commissioner and garrison; his account reflects the transitional political moment in which Siamese control was expanding but not yet total.
- The primary sources informing this narrative are Waterstradt’s own field observations, conversations with Sakai guides, Malay boatmen, and the Rajah; no archival collections are cited, as this is a first-person travel and natural history account rather than a document-based study.