Tutoop

Facts

  • Elevation: 1,220 m (4,003 ft)
  • Prominence: 1,156 m
  • Ribu category: Kurang Tinggi
  • Province: Kalimantan Barat (West Kalimantan)
  • Google Earth: kml
  • Rating: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (Bagged it? Be the first to rate it)
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  • Other names: Toetoop on old maps, possibly known as Ngaras

Photos

Bagging It!

We currently know very little about this peak – please contact us if you can provide any information.

Practicalities

    • Getting there: The roads west of Badau, in the direction of Puring Kencana, are in a terrible state and can currently be barely called roads. Therefore it is very tough to reach.
    • Accommodation: Unknown
    • Permits: Unknown
    • Water sources: Unknown

Local Average Monthly Rainfall (mm):
pontianak

Location

1 thought on “Tutoop”

  1. Had hoped to investigate this mountain after visiting the nearby (on a map) Danau Sentarum National Park. It very likely isn’t known locally as Ngaras. There are other possible names including Bukit Tunggul and Bukit Tugak (though the latter seems to refer to a lower nearby peak).

    To get to Danau Sentarum, I flew to Putussibau, got a taxi from the airport to the bus terminal, a 15min journey, for Rp50k (driver kept going on about kratom coffee – a narcotic widely drunk locally!) Took a bus to Lanjak at 10am for Rp100k. These buses go as far as the Malaysian border near Badau (4 hours total) but Lanjak is about one hour before the border and is the northern gateway to the national park.

    The folk at Lanjak bus terminal are some of the friendliest I have met on my travels, but there are no other tourists here and the WWF office is closed and locked. I spend the afternoon drinking cheap Chinese beer at the bus terminal, and eventually agree to an expensive trip to Danau Sentarum the following morning for Rp1.1 million. There are no other interested parties and with the water low in dry season I can’t get a better price but still it seems very steep for a half-day out on the lake. I stay in the Hotel Gandaria opposite, cheap at Rp100k, basic but fine.

    The trip to Danau Sentarum is ok… a little underwhelming due to the haze and smog from forest fires in the dry season. We get to Bukit Tekanang in about one hour, and I walk up to the wooden viewing platform at the top of this little 130m (ish) peak. Less than 20 minutes. Quite a grand view even in the haze, but cannot see the Ngaras area, just the hills this side of it. I do see a woodpecker which is nice.

    Back down at the pier I am asked to buy an entrance ticket. It’s a weekday so they try to charge me Rp225,000 in addition to me already having paid over 1 million to get here. I ask what the price is for local people. Rp7,500, one thirtieth of the cost that a foreigner has to pay. I start waving my tax card and local driving licence and eventually get the local rate (the foreign rate is very expensive and really not worth it). I’m glad I didn’t think to stay here overnight as they would have tried to get Rp450,000 out of me in entrance tickets alone!

    Navigating back on the boat is difficult work…. all the junctions look almost identical and there are so many of them.

    Back at Lanjak, after getting nowhere with info on either Ngaras or any public transport options on much further west to Balaikarangan and the Entikong area from where I would like to try Gunung Merdai, they tell me of a bus down to Sintang via the palm oil plantations from Badau. So, I can at least go to Badau and ask around about Ngaras and see. EIther way I can get down to Sintang afterwards and on to Bukit Raya.

    So, I head to Badau. 50k on a DAMRI bus at 11am. Less than one hour on a decent road. Badau itself is hot, sweaty and noisy and nobody seems to be able to help. Then I go for a beer near my losmen Loh Jinawi. A friendly local chap starts asking about my trip plans and I try to get him interested in taking me to the Ngaras area the next day. Just a day trip, and with the aim of finding a local near the base of the hill who can take me to the top (on Google it looks like there is a settlement in the valley just to the east of the peak). He agrees, but says it will be about 3 hours to get there because the roads are awful beyond Badau. Then his mother tells him he is not allowed to take me there, and I think it’s because she is worried I am trying to do a runner over the border into Malaysia. Why else would a lone foreigner have such an interest in an obscure hill on the Malaysia-Indonesia border?

    So, I give up and the next day I get the mad Valenty bus for Rp200,000 at 9am that cuts through the massive palm oil plantations and to Sintang, before continuing on to Pontianak. The journey is bone shaking and I emerge in Sintang 8 hours later covered in thick orange dust from the dry plantation tracks. I’m not sure this bus would run in wet weather. I later go mad at hotel staff at ‘My Home’ in Sintang when they charge me Rp88,000 for a Bintang beer when it can be bought in one of the cafes opposite for just Rp45,000.

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