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Back in 1885 a surveyor called William Cameron went for a long walk in the Malayan jungle. After weeks hacking at steep, dense rainforest he happened across a landscape with "gentle slopes and rounded hills" at around 5,000ft - but without the help of satellite positioning, it was ages before anyone found it again.

Once on the map, though, Cameron's garden of Eden developed into a hill-station for colonials looking to cool their heels, grow wisteria, walk, and come home to their mock-Tudor bungalows for slap-up cream teas by a roaring log fire.

Since then extensive tea plantations, golf courses and market gardens have been dropped like speckled handkerchiefs amongst the rainforest, and Malaysian mock-Tudor apartment blocks have sprouted everywhere.

But the main attraction is still the fresh air. As a Chinese businessman, reluctantly relaxing with his family, pointed out "Here the only entertainment is beer. At least at Genting [another hill-station] you can gamble."

For mad dogs and Englishmen, though, walking is the Cameronian thing to do. The guidebooks refer to the 14 numbered trails as, variously, "not much more than a stroll", and "jungle trekking". Which, I'm afraid, is as accurate as any pre-information you're likely to get. (I did later come across a warning that no-one should set out without a box of waterproof matches.)

Each trail's beginning is marked by optimistic signs. Inside, the rainforest can be devilishly difficult. After all, it was on one of these strolls that the Thai silk entrepreneur and ex-CIA operative Jim Thompson (whose house is one of Bangkok's major tourist attractions) disappeared without trace in 1967.

My first expedition was a combination of walks 11 and 12, which according to the sketch map would bypass a settlement of orang asli - the Malaysian aboriginals.

The path was good. The only noise was the gentle drip of cloud condensation from leaf to leaf. Nevertheless, take an Englishman's legs into the rainforest and they quickly begin to transmit fearful messages about leeches and ants.

After two hours I'd seen nothing but steep greenery and heard nothing but the occasional whoop. I presumed this was a bird, but the asli could have had their blowpipes targeted on my butt all the way.

Then the jungle suddenly retreated in face of a raw clay track freshly scarred by large metal caterpillars. More mock-Tudor apartments were evidently on the way - and so was torrential rain. Within seconds I had mud in my socks.

Fortunately, path 12 emerges near Ye Olde Smoke House, everyone's image of an antique, oak-beamed country inn, complete with horse-brasses, snuggeries, and creaking leather sofas. Plaques behind the bar encourage customers to "avoid continuous belching" and "use marksmanship in the toilet."

Who cares that it's a fake: it was a pleasure to stagger out of the rainforest and be steamed dry by the log fire, browsing through a menu that boasted bubble and squeak and scones with strawberry preserve.

The following day I tackled trail 2. The path started confidently in the monk's gardens at the Sam Poh temple in Brinchang. I planned to follow it south to join up with number 8 through to Tanah Rata - the main village of the highlands.

It quickly became clear that the previous day had not been typical. 'Walking' was hardly a suitable description for hauling oneself upwards on roots, bending double through tunnels of bamboo, and abseiling down with lianas wrapped around one's arms.

The sheer physical effort wasn't bad, but after a while the psychological pressure began to mount. The path was totally without markings, and each major obstacle had an alternative route. Most fizzled out, but as time went on, the questions they posed became increasingly disturbing. Was I on the right path? And, later, was this a path at all?

After about three hours of painful progress I'd battered down a 45-degree slope through skin-ripping shrubbery to end up ankle deep in water. Whereupon all trace of any path disappeared completely, no matter how far upstream or downstream I splashed.

At this point I recalled the words of Jim Thompson, who, some days before his disappearance, had commented that it would be hard to get really lost in the jungle. You just followed the rivers down to the flatlands, some 50 miles away.

So did I do a Jim and follow my stream, or did I do what travel writers should never do - try to retrace my steps? Doing a Jim was never a serious option.

Back at the top of the savage incline, I noticed a piece of sodden newspaper tied half-way up a tree. Could this be a sign? And there was another. Then, just as it had done the previous day, the rainforest fell away; never have I been so pleased to be standing in a cabbage patch.

Three men rose to their feet to stare at this muddied apparition. Their vegetables were going to Singapore, they said. And what about me? I gestured airily in the general direction of Tanah Rata. The men grinned. No, Tanah Rata was that way, they said, pointing behind me.

And so it was, an hour later, that I bumped back into Brinchang sitting on top of a huge pile of cabbages.

Some people believe that Jim Thompson, bored with his Asian existence, had used the Cameron Highlands to slip out of his old life and start again. That option never occurred to me for a moment. Stuff the indignity of re-entering civilisation as a vegetable, I was thinking, take me to the nearest Devonshire cream tea.

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