When I went backpacking for around 18 months back in 2012, I never kept a diary or made a blog, and I now have dream-like flashbacks of being in places which I cannot pinpoint. Hence I’m recording my bike travels these days for the sake of my own flawed memory, and admittedly the nagging desire to share experience is also a factor.
May/June 2019
Having cycled out to all the national parks and green areas on the map at the western end of Java, I decided to throw my bike onto a coach and head all the way east. After 26 hours of being messed around changing buses and waiting indeterminate lengths of time, I’d had enough, so I hauled my bike out at a place called Besuki on the north coast of east Java, reassembled it and started riding.
Besuki to Kawah Ijen
It was good to be off the bus and I was soon on a mountain road lined with fairly aggressive macaques which was to be a reoccurring theme. As darkness descended I swung into a plantation area and set up camp in a patch of wooded land. It being the dry season, I didn’t bother with the outer part of my tent, so essentially slept under a mosquito net with a great view of the trees silhouetted against the night sky and an abundance of fireflies swirling above me. I slept well aside from being woken by some loud crashing and commotion in the sugar cane fields next to me, which I assumed to be the antics of jungle pigs (‘babi hutan’ in Indonesian).
The next day was to be the biggest climb of the trip – a couple of thousand metres up to the Ijen volcano complex – famous for having the world’s largest highly acidic crater lake where sulphur is mined in hellish conditions and blue flames which take on the appearance of flowing lava can be seen shooting out of the ground. Definitely a one of a kind place!
I passed through Bondowoso at daybreak, made the climb through some killer scenery (and mercifully cloudy conditions) and finally stopped short of Ijen crater to spend night 2 camping at Kawah Wurung; a much less known but incredibly beautiful area which I pretty much had to myself. It’s at times like this, riding along a ridge surrounded by crazy scenery, that I wished I had a drone or even a GoPro as the video potential was next level, but I’m keeping things light and low tech for now.
The panorama at sunrise was beautiful and definitely can’t be captured in a photo. A couple of chaps on a motorbike stopped to shoot the breeze as I was packing up my stuff and after that it was a bit more climbing to reach the base camp area for Ijen crater.
It was already cold at this altitude so the evening was spent around a fire chatting to the friendly local people. Later a nice Italian couple showed up and we started hiking up the mountain at 1am. We were told that due to dangerous volcanic activity, we weren’t permitted to go down to the crater, which meant seeing the blue flames wouldn’t be possible, but we couldn’t resist sneaking down and were lucky enough to be able to sit and watch this otherworldly spectacle (I couldn’t get a photo worth sharing though).
I’d heard that the sulphur miners here work in tough conditions but until I saw it myself I could never appreciate how brutal it really is. Their bodies are strained to absolute breaking point as they haul ridiculous loads up the mountain side from the crater through thick sulphur clouds. All the time they are inhaling very harmful fumes which wreck their lungs. I suspect wearing a gas mask as tourists do would be impractical, as the miners are already fighting to catch their breath due to the physical stress of their work which pays them perhaps $13 a day.
After taking this forbidden deviation into the bowels of hell, we headed towards the best place to catch the sunrise which was suddenly full of western tourists presumably ferried in from Bali. I’m not used to being surrounded by so many white people (lol) but the view over the bright blue lake and mountains as it was gradually illuminated by the sunrise was incredible and would be hard to top on this trip.
Kawah Ijen to Alas Purwo
After trotting back to base camp, packing my stuff and scoring some breakfast, I headed down the other side of the mountain in the direction of Banyuwangi. A 20 km descent through the jungle was a well earned treat and after a further 50 or 60 km of riding on flatter terrain, I made it into very pleasant rural plantation lands (lots of dragon fruit cactus fields amongst other things), and finally entered Alas Purwo national park.
What first struck me about this place is that it was teeming with wildlife. I stopped to take a picture of the entrance archway and noticed the trees to the left were alive with the crashes of families of monkeys (Javan lutung). Then to the right a giant squirrel leapt an unimaginable distance between trees. Before sunset I also observed wild cattle (banteng) and green peafowl in a jungle savanna.
From some books I’ve read however, I knew this place to be famous more for spiritual than natural attractions as it is a place of pilgrimage for the Javanist animistic/hindu-buddhist religion which predates Islam. The forests contain crumbling temples and sacred caves where ancestral meditation rituals are performed.
After spending night 3 in a campground, I wandered to one such cave in the morning and was taken in by a group of mystics along the way. They encouraged me to first shower under a bamboo pipe and before I knew it I was stark naked with 3 guys in the jungle surrounded by monkeys. They were lovely people but I ended up leaving them to do their thing so I could pack up my stuff and ride to the end of the peninsula along the forested coastal road.
The path finally terminates at a world famous surf spot and after a morning spent with Javanese mystics, I chatted with some Aussie surfers in the afternoon. It was a great place to relax and recuperate.
Alas Purwo to Meru Betiri
I aimed to leave Alas Purwo before nightfall and head in the direction of Meru Betiri (a good 70 km to the west) and a guy at the entrance post suggested I take a dirt track shortcut right through the jungle. It sounded intriguing and it was certainly an awesome ride. I raced through the forest for hours without seeing another person. The beauty of cycling compared to motorbiking through a place like this is that I make very little noise so animals don’t run and hide. On this track, families of deer occasionally leapt across my path, the usual assortment of primates crashed around overhead and a cute civet (luwak) also made an appearance.
I briefly visited a very wild beach, but with darkness rapidly descending, I had to haul my bike straight into the jungle and set up camp. This was hardcore jungle, really in the middle of nowhere with all kinds of noisy animals all around. At sunrise I was back racing along the jungle paths but unfortunately they seemed to deteriorate and I couldn’t find a way out. I finally came to a lake being watched over by a chap who told me the only way out was to use his boat sevice. Later I bitterly regretted not taking this option, but at the time I was convinced there was a path I could ride out on. It never materialised and after some hopeless attempts at backtracking and penetrating through the forest, I ended up back at square one and left the national park via the same gateway I had entered through.
Still, it was a pleasant ride along the country roads and I made it to Meru Betiri in the afternoon. This national park was hardcore cycling up and down rocky rainforest mountain dirt tracks and fording across rivers.
I prefer to go where the roads are bad however, as you almost feel like you’ve gone back in time into a better preserved, less spoiled world. My surroundings became more and more idyllic and rustic until I finally arrived at a stunning and truly wild beach where it turns out turtles come to lay eggs almost every night of the year.
Some guys are doing good work here, patrolling the beach every night and transferring the eggs to a safe enclosure before the wild pigs can get to them.
After a month the babies hatch out and come to the surface, at which point they send them out on their way into the ocean. Green turtles, olive ridleys and hawksbill turtles are common but unfortunately the giant leatherbacks stopped coming in 2012.
I was able to observe one large female scoping out the beach for egg laying suitability during the night and also took a bucket full of babies to the beach in the morning and released them into the ocean. An unexpected highlight of the trip for sure!
The next morning I rode around some villages and then headed back out over the mountain and finally exited the national park in search of some food. It was nearing the end of the fasting month and finding much needed sustenance was proving to be challenging. Not so far out of the national park, a lovely family whose house sat opposite a Hindu temple hooked me up however. The lady made me a couple of plates of gado-gado which I paid maybe $2 for but then they fetched me a coconut and a bunch of bananas from the garden as well as a bowl of steamed peanuts, all of which they wouldn’t accept money for. Lifesaver!!
I decided to spend the night in this area and found a vast, empty beach where I set up my tent against the mangrove forest. I should’ve used the outer waterproof part on this occasion however, as when the rain swept in during the night and I leapt out and couldn’t find the tent pegs, all I could do was sling the waterproof outer part over the inner compartment which then collapsed due to being pegged down in powdery sand. Amateur! It wasn’t my finest moment climbing into a collapsed, wet tent, plastered in sand, but when you’ve been tackling mountains all day it’s surprising how well you can sleep in such conditions.
Meru Betiri to Baluran
I didn’t hesitate to pack up and head out first thing in the morning and managed to throw some water over my bike which had also fallen over in the night and got caked in sand. First and last time camping actually on a beach I think! I then pushed ahead to my final intended destination – Baluran national park – which meant a good 130 km of pedalling.
It was a long ride but finally I passed by the national park, pushed on a little further and spent the night close to a reservoir where some friendly people were selling food and drinks.
They were more than happy to let me charge my gadgets and sleep there on a bamboo bed of sorts (I didn’t bother with the tent for the fist time in a week). I ordered several drinks from the stall owners, partly due to being thirsty but also in an attempt to compensate for their hospitality by supporting their very modest businesses, but both stalls tried to decline my money?!? I tried my best to force the right amount of cash onto them before heading off into the national park in the morning.
You got the feeling you were no longer in Indonesia in this place as the landscape is mostly barren and dry savanna. As I was riding in, what appeared to be a mirage on the road ahead came into focus and I realised I was watching a huge snake, easily as long as the road was wide, undulating it’s way from one side to the other. I was pretty annoyed that I didn’t get my camera out in time and it made it into the undergrowth before I could get a shot, causing alarm to some wild chickens that were scratching around there.
The scenery was nice, but the road came to an end at a beach that was a little too crowded for my liking and the local tourists hanging out there were under constant attack from thieving macaques. I risked leaving my bike there as all my stuff is pretty well secured (I had stopped wrapping my tent in a plastic bag after the monkeys in Meru Betiri ripped it open and bit a hole in the ground sheet before confirming it was non-edible) and followed some trekking trails into the interior of the national park. It seems nobody ventures beyond the beach as I didn’t see a sole and enjoyed a bit of relaxation beside a watering hole, although the only wildlife I observed was yet more primates.
On returning I soon discovered that the macaques were good with zips as the two side pockets of my panniers were wide open and my tools and bits and pieces were scattered around. After retrieving my stuff, I rode back across the African-esque savanna and turned my mind to how on earth I was going to get back to Jakarta amidst the chaos of ‘mudik’ – the annual mass homebound exodus which peaks at the end of the holy month of fasting.
It turned out fine in the end and the following evening I was on a quite luxurious coach which took only 18 hours to get me home. It was nice to be able to sit back and not concern myself with where I might sleep, eat, etc. Spending time out in the wild like this renews my appreciation for the simple things. Returning to the big city was a bit depressing but at the same time comforting, having immediate access to a bed, bathroom facilities, a market, a fridge, air conditioning….
Bicycle Touring Indonesia 