When I was in class two, we had an English lesson on the
destruction of Pompei with the volcanic eruption of Mt Vesuvius. Quite a morbid
story to be teaching a six year old. None the less I was totally taken in. I saw volcanoes as these sleepy monsters who
come to life and breathed bright orange fire. Somewhere at the back of mind I
had made up my mind to visit a volcano some day.
Fast forward twenty four years.
Last year the Grecian , the diva and me had finally frozen
on Indonesia for our December holiday.
The three of us decided to pick one destination of our choice. No we
were not influenced by Zindagi na milege dobara! My obvious choice was the
volcano rich East Java.
I soon learnt that getting from Bangalore to East Java was
no easy task. After three flights, one bus ride, one jeep ride and 20 hours
later, we reached our destination – Probolingo. After a few hours of shut eye
,our chirpy driver gave us our wake up call at 4.00 A.M and off we went to
watch the sunrise at Mt Bromo. Surprisingly we were the only international
tourists at the venue. I guess East Java is not as popular as other islands
such as Bali. Which is quite a shame.
Anyway I digress. After waiting for a while in the cold the
sun finally rose , which was met with thunderous applause by the locals. The
diva and I were quite amused with the rather warm welcome the sun got.
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| Sunrise at Mt Bromo |
It was quite a pretty sight and worth the wait in the cold.
The volcanic craters seems arise magically from the mist bathed in soft pink
and orange light. Luckily for us we got talking to an Indonesian couple who
asked us to join them in exploring the place. We then drove right around to
climb the mount and get a view of the actual crater. While we took a short break, I decided to try
out some hot soup from a cart vendor. This was no ordinary soup. It was heaven
in a bowl! I later discovered this hot broth like soup with dumplings is called
Miso. MOST.AMAZING.SOUP.EVER.
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| Volcanic Crater |
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| Relaxing at the Savannah |
Our next stop was the savannah. This was one of the places
recommended by the Indonesian couple and it was truly lovely. Lying there,
I realized I had not experienced this much silence and vast open spaces
in a long long time. We lazed around
here for a bit before heading for our final destination for the day.
The whispering sands were our final and next stop. I heard
several different versions of how this place earned that name. The most popular
reasons seems be that it was named after a movie that was shot there. This place was a vast massive gigantic sea of black sand
with the mountains in the background.
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| Flower seller at whispering sands |
No one visits a such vast open space and not holler out
names in hope of an echo. So that is what we all did. And boy the response
echos were little haunting and creepy. Almost like hidden mystery creatures
were calling out my name from beyond the mountains. Yes apparently my
imagination is a bit over active.
Day # 2 Ijen crater
The next day we had decided to visit the Ijen crater. The ijen crater is home to a massive lake of
sulphuric acid. To get to this crater we had to do a to a backbreaking ,hopefully calorie burning hike.
The hike took us about two hours. The climb was a bit slippery and the cold
weather just made it tougher. Of course none of this seemed to matter to the
miners. Each of them carried about 80 –
100 kg of sulphur on their shoulders. I
must add they pranced around like ballerinas oblivious to the slippery and
steep slopes.
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| Ijen Crater |
Again here the two hour climb was totally worth the break-taking
view that awaited us. The crater is filled with a brilliant blue acid. Grey and
white rocks framed this lake and there was mist all over the place.
Despite the strong chemically stench on and off, it was the
perfect place to just sit and relax. A
steep stony path led right down to the lake, which we decided to skip. The miners were pretty friendly and chatty.
Some of them even offer to escort you down to the lake and inside the mines.
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| Miners at Ijen |
With that we were done with our East Java tour and took a
ferry to Bali. Unlike Bali which is far more developed , East Java is not
popular with tourists. Which is good in a way. But also sad that so many people
don’t realize how beautiful this island is too.
