We woke up early in the morning to catch a great morning view of the Batad Rice Terraces, however, I also realized that I won’t be seeing thie idyllic place any longer. Today, we will be making our way to the village of Bangaan, which is a 4 hour hike away from Batad village. My friend who has been on this hike mentioned that this would be much easier than the hike to Tappia Falls, although there will be ups and downs, it will still be much easier than the previous day’s hike.
After morning bath in freezing water, we quickly made our way of the village. There is a way out of the village behind the row of inns. One would have to pass by a couple of rice fields along the way to get to the main path. However, since I have a problem with my balance, I accidentally lost it and my leg fell into the rice plantation nearby, mud and all. At least this answered my question on how deep the rice field was – knee deep.
Now, we were just starting the hike and my leg is half covered in mud. Not to mention ruining a couple of rice crops along the way. Great way to start the day, huh? I tried wiping off most of the mud but there were still a lot left. Fortunately, there was a small creek nearby, and I used it to clean my leg. Now I am clean as a whistle again!
As my friend had described, the way to the next village was pretty flat, there was a well trodden path along the mountainside and one will not get lost just by following it. The path was pretty much flat, sometimes going up and sometimes going down, but not that much. I thought this was going to be a fairly easy hike. It was really invigorating to breathe the fresh mountain air. The path goes through wondrous mountain vistas with green mountains everywhere. This is definitely a hike for nature lovers.
As one looks at the path up ahead, sometimes it would be difficult to discern where the path is unless we actually got there. Moreover, the entire path itself doesn’t have any rail guards. So if you fall, it will be a long way down. So try not to get too close to the edge. I don’t really like heights but somehow hiking here was ok.
There were some rest stops along the way, but mostly they were just little shelters, most probably for villagers who were going to the next village. Imagine having to walk this path every single day, I’m sure they can get there in less than 3 hours. The rest stops were just empty huts with seats for people to rest. It was surprising to see them to be quite clean despite the remoteness of the huts. In one of the rest stops there was a great area for viewing the surrounding mountains, in the far distance we can see the Batad Rice Terraces while right before us is a huge expanse of mountains. In some of the valleys below, we can see small villages with rice terraces of their own. So it is not only Batad or Banaue that has rice terraces.
All throughout the hike we didn’t really get to see too many people most of the people were villagers working in the fields below. As we were getting closer to the village we saw more of them and they didn’t seem to mind us crossing their fields. It seems that hikers are quite common here. As expected, the hike despite being 4 hours long, didn’t really tire me that much. I love walking, as long as it is not going up or down. This hike was a wonderful way to experience the raw beauty of Ifugao province and I highly recommend it.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/Batad.kmz} zoom=14]