I'll Be There Dreckly: Smoking Semeru

Mt Semeru, Java Island, Indonesia

In this blog: hiking through the night to the top of an active volcano

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Sylvain, my French hiking partner for a few days
on the journey to start the trek

Mt Semeru is an active volcano, and the highest point on the main Indonesian island of Java at 3,676m. One of my main reasons for visiting Indonesia was to see active volcanoes, and I'd read a bit about hiking it. I was quite keen on doing so, but in the end I gave up on the idea when it seemed too expensive and full of hassle, thinking I'd do another one instead. Upon checking in at a hostel in the city of Malang though, I spotted a note from another traveller asking if anyone was keen on joining him for the ascent. My travel buddy Canadian Renė was away for a few days sorting out a visa and I needed something to do, so I left a reply and the following morning was awoken in the large dorm room by a guy by the name of Sylvain. He was a friendly and tall 22 year old French guy who before I'd even opened my eyelids, reeled off fact after fact about what we need to do and where we needed to go, whilst I lay in bed half asleep and unable to process anything he said, even if it was in English. Half an hour later when I was a bit more with it, he started over again and making sense I soon decided I was up for it.

We popped into a local cafe for breakfast, where the friendly-as-you-like middle age owner chatted away and asked to take our photo to put on her Facebook page. Through Malang's heavy traffic we took a minibus across town to the bus station, and another minibus to the town of Tampung. We'd been told that to hike Semeru we needed a medical certificate, a new one on me, so we searched around for somewhere to get this done, finding a small local hospital a sweaty twenty minute walk away in the midday sun. It was the strangest hospital I've ever been in in that there were about fifteen staff but literally no patients. None. They spoke little English but were very smiley and we managed to get what we wanted; a simple blood pressure and BMI reading. We asked them if they knew how to get to the base of Mt Semeru and they discussed it between themselves for a few minutes. Different people made phone calls, and suddenly we were told a jeep was coming to get us. Imagine that, a hospital that doubles as a travel agency.

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The jeep was ridiculously expensive for the distance involved but we had little choice, and the journey absolutely beautiful. We started off passing apple orchards for a few miles before the road climbed into the hills and got progressively steeper and windier, passing through jungle, small villages then eventually vast swathes of land growing a variety of vegetables since volcanic soil is pretty good for that sort of thing. The views were fantastic. We eventually reached the small village of Ranu Pani and found a very basic homestay for the night. Being at around 2000m altitude, we opened our bags to find the increased atmospheric pressure had popped both our packets of crisps, and left other packet bulging!

Decisions for the hike needed to be made, and whilst Sylvain was a really nice and friendly guy, he was also a bit arrogant in his opinions and reluctant to compromise and that irritated me. He was 22 and had been traveling for two weeks while I was nine years older with two years travelling experience behind me, and whilst I'm not always right that counts for something. We argued about how much water to take and I was right in the end, we argued how long it would take to organise the trip and a day was fine as I predicted, and we debated whether we needed a guide, which it turned out was unnecessary as I proposed. I realised how easy it is travelling with Rene. Bring back Rene!

Heading for the top

We set off at 8am the next day having paid the permit fee - a generous ten times more expensive for foreigners than natives, and strolled past some beautifully kept fields of onions before starting to head up the mountain. For the next three hours the walking was steady, shaded and very pleasant and the trees and shrubs we passed were unexpectedly very different to lowland Indonesia. To our excitement after hearing a rustle we looked amongst some trees below and saw a number of wild black langur monkeys which was a nice surprise. Rounding a corner the scenery changed as we unexpectedly reached a nice lake and stopped to admire it for a moment. Another half mile on the going got very steep for fifty metres before a beautiful scene unfolded before us as we reached a brief summit; a dry meadow lake of wild flowers in a green and pleasant valley shadowed by small volcanic peaks on each side.

About three hours in, a beautiful lake part way up the volcano

The scenery changed constantly all the way

The scenery changed again as we entered a forest, meeting three or four huge groups of Indonesian hikers resting and eating, all keen to say hello and 'where you from?' as we passed as did many that day. We had our lunch a little way on, the first of four meals of peanut butter sandwiches we made as we went along - a treat the first time, awful the last, but saved us carrying a cooker. We hid a bottle of water ready for the descent the next day to save weight and continued on. Despite my thoughts on his analytical skills, Sylvain was a really nice guy, and interesting and knowledgeable guy to talk to - a recent graduate in history who likes ancient history cause it's both less gory and 'cause he can't relate to it, whereas I find history I can't relate to immensely boring. His English was particularly good for a Frenchman (!) and many good conversations passed the time away nicely.

After a couple more changes in scenery we suddenly found ourselves at the campsite where people stay the night, located at the much cooler altitude of about 2,900m. It was only 2pm and we'd made way better progress than expected despite his purposely slower pace - 'slow and no stopping, that's what my father always says' - I prefer to go at my own pace and stop when I need to, but horses for courses. We had to decide whether to stay there or progress to the next campsite an hour on, but soon good old Mother Nature decided for us by unleashing a downpour. A school group of sixteen year olds excitedly invited us to shelter in their gazebo area and for the next couple of hours they chatted away whilst giving us tea and snacks. Come 5pm we put our hired tent up and fashioned the missing pegs from sticks, and after more peanut butter sandwiches it was lights out at 7.

7pm is a bedtime I've not seen since I was in nappies, but it was fairly necessary since the alarm clock was set for a record breaking (in my record book anyway) 12.30am! The reason for this masochistic action is that the done thing on Mt Semeru is to hike through the night in order to reach the summit for sunrise when the skies are clear, and it's certainly not something I'd normally do. I was convinced it would take just over three hours to get to the top based on previous experience so wanted to leave around 2am so we didn't get cold at the top waiting. Silvain however was convinced it would take way longer and just wouldn't listen, and I eventually relented, telling him I'd be moaning at him about the cold when we got there early. Even when it came to setting the alarm he pushed to set it an extra five minutes earlier than I proposed before I shot him down for being so pedantic; honestly!

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After just two proper hours sleep cause of the noise and discomfort, at 1am we set off for the summit. From the plateaux the campsite was on, it was now straight up. Silvain had his headtorch on whilst I made do with my little pen torch. The track twisted and turned through forest for an hour and we soon hit rush hour traffic - it was just like the M25 on a Friday night. We overtook hiker after hiker, not because we were going particularly fast but because they were so slow - all Indonesian, so I'm not sure whether to blame it on the shorter legs, the cigarettes (the national pastime I've decided) or just a lack of fitness. After an hour we left the tree line behind and hit the real volcano, from then on it was nothing but loose volcanic ash and small rocks below our feet. Hiking was now slow and really hard work, partly due to the 35% gradient now, but mostly 'cause it was similar to walking on sand dunes, and each step seemed to be four forward and back. Indonesian hikers were now littered everywhere beside the track, either catching their breath or in some cases passed out sleeping despite it being nearly zero degrees at this altitude! We ploughed on (literally) before later my torch battery died. I realised I must have left the spare been back at the tent so had to rely on stray flashed from other peoples lights thereon - hiking a volcano by night without a light is not recommended! It was good it was too dark to see the summit though since it would have been pretty demotivating in your sights all the time.

Summit

Eventually at 4.20am we were finally there, 3,676m above sea level. There was both the relief and satisfaction of getting there, and the amazing sight of volcanic activity since Mt Semeru as I said before is an active volcano. Whilst she's fairly well behaved there's still a natural vent a couple of hundred metres along from the summit, where she was puffing out gases and regularly spitting out red hot ashes into the air. It was such an exciting sight and totally unexpected, and to top it off the sound was like the jet engines of a plane taxing down the runway. It was truly awesome to behold.

Unfortunately it was also blooming freezing and a while until dawn so we went a little way down to a sheltered spot, where since we'd made it in 3 1/4 hours as I predicted I moaned like mad to Sylvain about the cold, mostly to remind him to listen to people! The views over the various city lights below were amazing and you could see the silhouettes of other volcanoes in the distance as well. At around 5am we saw glimmers of light on the horizon before a while later the sun started to rise, and what a sight it was, truly beautiful. We were soon able to see both the north and south coasts of Java, various towns and cities, and numerous volcanic peaks in all directions, their upper halves poking through a layer of cloud below and a couple of them smoking away as well. It was just incredible, and well worth all the effort. There were a good fifty people on the large summit now but it never felt overcrowded or like a mad tourist attraction. We couldn't stay forever though so after nearly 2.5 hours we started the descent, the loose volcanic sand now working to our favour as you could move almost effortlessly down through it, almost as if you were skiing. It was strange seeing the things which we'd walked past earlier but not been able to see, the rocky features, the green trees.

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Back at the campsite we dozed for an hour before packing up and heading back to base. I reckon there may have been up to a thousand hikers on the mountain at any one time and most of them under thirty and Indonesia, male dominated but with quite a few females and all very friendly as we passed. We saw just five other westerners on the mountain the whole time though, one of them being a White Kenyan lady leading a tour group which was resting two thirds of the way down. She'd been on the mountain many times, and recommended another route the rest of the way, 2km shorter and more beautiful but with another 600m high hill to go over so went for it. She was right on the beauty, but the hill killed our legs and the route ended up taking even longer! Partly because we ended up lost in thousands of acres of onion fields at the end! To top it off it then rained heavily and we sheltered under the overhang of a shed for half an hour, before some farmers pointed us roughly the right way and eventually we made it back to digs. It was a 14 mile journey over the two days, and I took a very necessary and very long hot shower, annoying everyone by inadvertently using all the hot water. We then had a nice conversation with a lovely Swiss couple for an hour or so who'd also just finished the hike; she a exhibit restorer in a museum and he it turned out, a successful French photographer called Andri Pol - http://www.andripol.com/.

I slept for over ten hours that night, quite a feat for me and woke up feeling very refreshed the next morning, albeit pretty achey. After relaxing for a few hours and poking around the very poor mountain village, we then had to try and get back to Malang somehow. The hire jeep was ridiculously expensive so we ended up doing something even more ridiculous - taking a share jeep where sixteen of us stood, sat and squeezed in an old open-backed Toyota Land Cruiser jeep. Despite standing on my aching legs for the whole way it was good fun chatting and joking with the other Indonesian hikers, and they even sorted us a lift for the second leg back to Malang city a couple of hours later. From smoking crater to smoky city, one heck of a trip.