It’s been a good year and a half since I last cycled out of town. I’d hoped to take a ride on another island, but with one circumstance and another I was confined to Java and after some scanning on Google maps, I cycled towards the Garut and Tasikmalaya region.
Day 1: Jakarta to Danau Sanghyang Heuleut area
In an attempt to circumnavigate Bandung city, I took the road heading south of Cipatat and found it to be a pleasantly quiet and forested route. However, the steepness of the roads meant that camping opportunities were nonexistent and as nightfall approached, things seemed somewhat hopeless. Thankfully a nature area with some tourist infrastructure materialized right on cue and the friendly guys there hooked me up with a stunning spot to pitch up.
Day 2: Danau Sanghyang Heuleut area to Palawija Pass
It would have been good to explore the area more but I wanted to keep moving, so after packing up and fixing a front puncture, it was back onto the mountainous roads. I continued to skirt around the urban areas, passing through Cillin and eventually taking the road southwards from Majalaya towards Garut.
The climbs on this route (which crosses Kamojang bridge) are insane and I was struggling with some mechanical issues which caused my chain to snap on the way up. Never happened before and I just replaced the chain before leaving on this trip! I approached some teenage lads who were tinkering with motorbike parts in their yard for help, and despite some initial communication issues, they were super helpful and we got it fixed. They tried to decline but I slipped them a couple of notes and then put the newly fixed chain to the ultimate test by continuing up the absurdly steep road.
I pitched up my tent in a roadside rest area on night 2 and woke up to some impressive views. Upon trying to put a little air in the front tire before heading out, I discovered to my annoyance that the valve of the innertube was wrecked and unfixable. I knew there would be no bike shops in such a mountainous area and started to stress out, but was then pointed to a motorbike mechanic about 50 meters away who also sold bicycle innertubes. I need to learn to keep a cooler head!
Day 3: Palawija pass to Buffalo Hill (close to Cipaganti)
I’d noticed a place called Buffalo Hill on the map but didn’t know quite what to expect (other than a hill with some buffaloes on it) but getting there turned out to be more arduous than anticipated. It was nice to be off the beaten track in some beautiful and friendly villages, but as the ridiculous roads finally deteriorated into impossible dirt paths, I was forced to hide the bike and continue on foot. Eventually I emerged onto a lush grazing pasture near the top of the mountain where a handful of buffaloes were indeed holding court. I had other company in the form of fellow campers who were all very youthful and made me feel like the old man on the site. The night was extremely cold and windy for this part of the world but all in all I was blessed to be in such a gorgeous place with stunning views.
Day 4: Buffalo Hill to Cipaganti (next village along the mountain)
After retrieving my bike from its hiding place, I stopped off in the village in search of some food. The very friendly lady at the local shop must’ve taken pity on me and went to a lot of effort in cooking me eggs with rice, noodles, fresh sambal, fried fish (which I awkwardly had to decline due to my vegetarianism) kerupuk etc. I fully intended to pay her for this but she refused my money and literally chased me out the door and shoved the cash back in my pocket. I felt bad.
I knew from having been sent a Guardian article by my mum that there is a non-profit organization in the next village called Little Fireface who are studying and protecting the slow loris population on these mountains. This is an animal which has previously been off my radar but I was intrigued enough to go and knock on their door and had a nice chat with the very welcoming and interesting coordinators of the project who don’t get many random visitors and were quite shocked to see me. It being Sunday, they were not going out to track the lorises that night so I tried, and ultimately failed to spot them independently. I spent a crazy night wandering the mountainside fruitlessly shining my torch into trees, but only managed to see some kind of shrew, a colorful spider and a toad. Sorry guys, but you just weren’t what I was after.
Day 5: Cipaganti to Talaga Bodas
After a weird night camped in the corner of a vegetable field, I awoke to some impressive sunrise views of Papandayan and Cikuray mountains. I headed down to the village where I’d stowed my bike behind a house and proceeded to ride out through Garut town and on towards Tasikmalaya. An enjoyable ascent towards the Talagabodas stratovolcano took me past the intriguingly pyramid shaped Gunung Sadahurip, which reminded me of camping among the mysterious megaliths of Gunung Padang a few years previously (see my previous ‘8-day trip’ blog post).
The weather at the top was cold and wet. I bumped into some Jakarta guys and we wandered around the crater lake and then came to some pools fed by a natural hot spring. Sliding into the hot water after 5 days of exertion out in the elements was incredible, so camping next to the pools was a no-brainer. I boiled myself into the night and didn’t hesitate to take a final plunge in the morning after waking up in my chilly tent.
Day 6: Talaga Bodas to Cikuray mountain
I thought it would be good to bag a mountain summit to round off the trip and Cikuray, a classic dormant cone, stands tallest in this range at 2821 meters. I aimed for her north-eastern flank and found myself at Kiara Jenggot ‘basecamp’ where I was able to offload my bike and the few things I wouldn’t need, cram the rest into one pannier and start trekking.
**Show-off alert**
Lately I’ve been trying to keep fit, in part by running up the stairwell in my apartment building 27 stories, so this trek seemed like a good cardio test. The guy who registered me to climb the mountain said it may take 8 hours to ascend although 3.5 is a possibility, but as I navigated farmers’ fields looking for the forest trailhead, some people I met who were heading down scoffed at the 3.5-hour notion and said it was certainly a 6-hour hike. This was like a red rag to a bull in my crazy mind and I became fixated on the number 2 and whether I could make it in 2 hours. I didn’t time it precisely but I certainly made it from basecamp to summit it less than 2.5 hours and felt pretty good about myself 😉
Initially I wasn’t rewarded with a view at the summit, only solid cloud, rain and wind, so I managed to erect my tent and change into what few dry clothes I had inside. Again, I was sharing the camp space with some youngsters, and the lads in the tent next door actually put their noisiness to good use by constantly shooing away the jungle pigs which emerge from the surrounding forest approximately every 10 minutes to raid the tents for any food they might find. Unlike the simian bandits I’ve become accustomed to, you can hear these huge tusked ‘babi hutan’ approaching as they make a lot of grunting and heavy breathing sounds, which was the cue for the boys to start ululating and banging saucepans, although the pigs were not easily scared. Not much sleep was had.
Day 7: Cikuray mountain back to Cipaganti
The 360-degree panoramic sunrise views were incredible, like looking out of an airplane, and definitely can’t be done justice by a photograph. I had a few slips and slides in the mud heading back down, but grabbing tree roots and clambering down through the jungle made a nice change from cycling.
Failing to see the slow lorises a few days previously had been niggling away at me and I kept going back and forth in my mind as to whether I should turn up again and pester the research people into helping me out. My stubbornness prevailed and fortunately I was able to spend the following night (officially as a volunteer) tagging along and following the lorises as they emerge from their bamboo homes after nightfall and move between the adjoining trees. Rampant agriculture has caused the forests here to shrink and disappear, but encouragingly these slow lorises appear to have adapted well to an agroforest environment and the guys at Little Fireface are doing good work in encouraging local farmers and villagers to get on board with the conservation effort.
My camera decided to start malfunctioning at this point, although it’s a tiny point and shoot which wouldn’t be suited to shooting nocturnal wildlife at the best of times, but if you squint you can make out a slow loris here climbing down a tree.
Day 8: Cipaganti to Bandung
Nothing much more to report as the ride up and over the mountains back to Bandung went smoothly enough and riding down the crazy roads where my chain had snapped some days earlier was good fun. The roads are so wild that people have taken it upon themselves to line some of the corners with gigantic walls of foam as the usual metal barriers must be unforgiving for the riders who presumably lose control all too often. I saw motorbikes whose engines weren’t strong enough making it halfway up a hill here and just slowing to a stop with the pillion passenger having to quickly dismount.
Day 9: Rest day in Bandung
I’ve never quite understood why Jakarta people love to go to Bandung, and I still don’t quite see it after spending a day (Christmas day actually) taking a little ride around. The cooler temperature is a blessing as it is nice to be able to sleep with no fan or AC. The Chinese area seemed interesting, and after gorging at a pizza hut the night before as a welcome change from the simple village food I’d been surviving on, I found an old-school Buddhist vegetarian place and ate some red rice with various vegetables and ‘fake meat’ offerings. I generally find these types of eateries, which seem to exist across most of southeast Asia, to be very peaceful and friendly places to relax which is what I intended to do before riding 170km back to Jakarta the following day.
Day 10: Bandung to Jakarta
As mentioned, I’d managed to do a bit of eating in Bandung although I was actually suffering from some diarrhea and sickness, presumably due to something I ate when leaving Cipaganti. A complete loss of appetite along with some niggling injuries made the long ride home seem like a daunting prospect and It was quite hellish, but I did make it back within the hours of daylight and staggered through my door a few kilos lighter and generally a bedraggled wreck of a man. Maybe I need to find a new hobby…
Bicycle Touring Indonesia 