Kinabalu National Park is also known as Taman Negra Kinabalu in Malaysia. The park is one of the first national parks in Malaysia having been founded in 1964. The site is also the first site in Malaysia to be awarded the honours of becoming a UNESCO world heritage site in late 2000. The park has over 4,500 plants species and animal species groped into 326 and 100 bird and mammal species respectively.
The park is located in Malaysian Borneo on the west coast of Sabah it covers a total area of approximately 754 kilometers around Mount Kinabalu which is the highest mountain in Borneo standing at 4,095.2 meters above sea level.
The park is a very popular tourist destination spots mostly in Sabah and Malaysia generally. The park is not only popular with the tourists but is also a favorite destination for climbers, hosting more than 40,000 climbers annually. The other visitors come as tourists and they make up about half a million individuals annually.
The park has its headquarters some 88 kilometers from Kota Kinabalu. There are sealed roads and highways that lead to the Kinabalu National Park from various destinations.
The park is run by an organization known as the Sabah Parks and visitors stream in all year round regardless of the climatic conditions. The most common form of accommodation at the parking will come in the form of chalets scattered around the headquarters. To make reservations for accommodation and guides, one needs to talk to the Sutera harbor, and the other requirement that one must fulfil is a night’s stay at Sutera lodge in addition to staying at Laban Rata which is more expensive than the Sutera lodge. The mountain summit tail starts at Timpohon, but there is an alternative route called the Mesilau trail. Other attraction in the Kinabalu National Park is the Low’s Gully which is a 1.6 kilometer ravine that stretches for about 10 kilometers on the mountain side. The park also boosts of diversity in flora and fauna. The mountain is a very young volcanic mountain that is known to grow at a rate of five millimeters annually.