The Green Corridor – my railway adventure

it was an exciting start to our railway adventure after reading abt it and seeing its pics on NSS’s FB. after what was considered a  necessary delay, we headed off for lunch at the tiong barhu market (where one stall sadly sold lor mee with shark meat). after lunch, we cabbed down to the bt merah bus interchange, walked abt 5 min and got to our starting point…

 

we crosses that man-made bridge, climbed the slope and had our first view of the railway track…… this had to be exciting! and you bet it was..

walking on the hard stone and gravel tracks was hard and only became harder… but hey, that was the fun of it… it was meant to be an adventure wasnt it.. 🙂

here’s our starting distance marker and who knew we’d keep calculating how far we’d walked..

we saw many of these purple flowers..

and many of these red/orange lantana-look-a-like flowers too..

tall long grass flagged either side of the track, and honestly, we did get a little worried that we might come face to face with a snake… haha..

so while we were checking out these grass on the other side of the track………. hugely immersed in the fear and excitement, BL said, ‘train’ in a very calm tone. we turned around, and had approximately 2 seconds to GET OFF THE TRACK!!! the train went right past us, and my friend said she say the train drive scold us as he FLEW past us…

and somewhere in this whole mess – i instinctively snapped a shot of the train with my back facing the track…

this being taken without zooming, that was how close we were to the train…… no wonder the man scolded us……….

the aftermath, we were dumb founded at the fact that the olden day train hardly made any noise in approaching as did the modern day MRT! train tracks may or may not have vibrated, as we thought it would. the only sound it made was the horn sound.. and it was scary. we had jumping into the scary grass patch irregardless of the fear we had of snakes hiding in there… we looked at each other – shocked… and there afte, we turned back almost every few seconds just to make sure we had more time to react.

moving on…

ants getting their meals…. some on the thorny stem. some inside the flower getting its sweet nectar..

we continued to walk..

so glad we were when we reached this junction where a mosque was. surely there’d be ice cold water here somewhere… unsure of whether we were allowed to enter a mosque, we slowly approached. no one said anything, and we went in to get a drink..

this tree in the mosque had HUMONGOUS jackfruits..

several ppl crossed the railway line at several places, like this..

zand we did come across a couple of make-shift houses…

light at the end of the tunnel???

no… we still had a long long way to go..

but seeing some form of civilization made us feel like we werent alone.. i love travellers palm… so majestic..

we checked out GPS now and then to find out how near we were to some amenities..

tired, we continued walking… we walked and we walked… and we walked… somewhere along, i saw this ‘leaf’ that looked awefully long and skinny to be a leaf. i looked hard and followed the leaf end to the leaf start – only to realise i was looking at the tail of an oriental whip snake………

its gorgeous almost luminous green was amazing!!!! we stood there for at least 5 min, watching the snake slowly inch its way into the thick hide of the grasses… of course we made sure there was no train on our butts…

no sooner than a few steps later, we saw this dead snake….. not a moult, cos we could see its vertebrae…

and we walked..

reached another small bridge… where we rested and looked around for a while..

cant remember the name of this grass..

tulip seeds were falling, like some magical fairies.. haha… couldnt get a shot of that.. but i did get one of a fallen one on the ground..

more grass flowers with feathery stigma..

and one that looks like christmas lights..

and we walked… and walked… and walked…..

a pic of the modern MRT with the KTM Line…

which meant we were near a station… the buona vista MRT station..! haha.. we were near where our bosses worked!

i spotted this nest…… huge insects were flying around it.. at first i thought it was a baya weaver nest or something.. but, no.. it was an insect nest.. but, wasp or hornet i dont know..

after a tiresome walk, what else could make your day brighter? we had to thank the vandals who did this cos it did bring a smile.. BUT, DONT DO IT NEXT TIME!

and you would think that after all these, we must have walked quite a distance…. but…

nahhh… we are just 2.5km from where we started..

ppl actually own this huge house..

along the way, we saw parrots….. and other really tiny bird with red eyes??? our cameras werent good enough to catch them, and seriously NEED a pair of binoculours!

isnt this leaf amazing.. the light green parts you see are unopened parts of the leaf… what is the name of this???

orange fungus after the previous day’s rain..

and canopy of trees are always give a warm feeling..

more railway line…………….

bees pollinating tiny purple flowers..

changing the track – interesting how ppl those days figured these out..

we had walked for 4 hours…

for a distance of..

7.75km…

you can imagine our joy when we finally saw this signboard…

WE HAD REACHED!!!!!

we finally walked down to the bt timah road and eagerly walked, ever so quickly to the King Albert Park mcdonalds – all we wanted was that sip of ice cold drink….

whats up with that upside down signboard??

but then that wasnt enough… the other 2 wanted to have dinner… so we walked to the nearby toh yi drive market to grab some food, again..

it was a great experience.. and i can only imagine how more fantastic the experience would have been if we didnt have to constantly look out for trains coming behind us… when the officially stop the trains in june 2011, i really hope the goverment will support Nature Society (Singapore)’s proposal to make the KTM railway line The Green Corridor connecting so many parts of Singapore.

Please read their proposal

and Support this Cause.

ive written the directions quite clearly i guess. for those who want to walk the track, please respect the fact that train that high speed WILL kill you. please think of your safety first. stay out of the tracks as far as possible. when you reach narrow lines, cross quickly. respect nature and keep safe..

if you are interested, NSS is organising a walk on the 11th of Dec along the Jurong Line. you may contact them..