Indonesia – Part 1 : Mt Bromo & Ijen Crater

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. 

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.

Volcanic Crater

After breakfast we took a horse (pony) ride to base of the mount. I was getting on a horse after like a billion years and held onto my pony and the pony man (?) for my dear life. After climbing what felt like 5 billion steps to get to the top most level of the crater, we were finally there. It was truly amazing to be peering into the crater of a volcano. It looked like a giant bowl of steaming orange soup. Yes I was clearly still hung-over on my amazing soup.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Coming up next – Indonesia part two – Ubud, Bali