Brace yourself for an onslaught of photos.
When I was in Indonesia for Golden Week this year, one of the things I did was see Mount Bromo at sunrise, followed by a trek up to Mount Bromo – a very much active volcano. It’s quite the trip. You generally need to book a driver and a guide for Mount Bromo. We opted to arrange just a driver (and no guide) as the volcanic area is only accessible by jeep. We opted for the hard core most time-efficient method. This meant leaving Jogyakarta at about 4pm in the afternoon whereby we took a a several hour train journey to Surabaya. We stopped at a place for dinner and then met our driver at Surabaya station at midnight. From there we would drive 4 hours in the middle of the night out to near Mount Bromo. We then had to change to a jeep vehicle with a separate Mount Bromo driver. No bed for us tonight. In the wee hours of the morning before sunrise, we layered up into our warmest clothes to make our way to the lookout point for sunrise. Because we had not booked a guide, we were to meet our driver later on in the morning. Phew, that was already a long day of 12 hours of travel without sleep and we still hadn’t climbed Mount Bromo yet.
It was about 4am and we donned our headtorches and set off.
It was still dark out, but soon the sun would rise. We weren’t about to climb Mount Bromo just yet. We were taken to the sunrise view point from which you can see Mount Bromo. Us and a couple of hundred other tourists were all waiting for sunrise.
Waiting in the dark:
Three mountains:
Cloud cover over the valley:
When daylight broke, it was only then you realised how crowded it was up there.
A bit like Fuji. You get to the summit and then realise it’s like Times Square.
The view was spectacular. Amazing volcanic mountains and cloud cover.
Sunrise:
Cloud and mist covers the valley and village below:
Mount Bromo is the middle wide, flattish volcano that you can see here. It is still very much an active volcano.
Remember this image below, because in a later post I will put up photos of the land below when all the cloud lifted. The contrast is stark.
Cloud cover starts to lift:
It was pretty amazing. I was actually really surprised at how beautiful Indonesia was. So many mountains and volcanoes, as we all beautiful resort islands. The food was amazing, everything was pretty cheap and the people really friendly.
Smoke billowing from the two volcanoes:
Selfie sticks everywhere in Indonesia! Was surprised at how many people I saw using there during my holiday:
Our driver took us to a different lookout point where it is less crowded and we got a different angle.
This is Mount Batok, and behind it you can see the billowing smoke from Mount Bromo.
Not even 9am yet and we were still yet to climb Mount Bromo! Stay tuned.
Memoirs of Aleisha 