I just spent a month in Indonesia. Well, actually just the islands of Lombok, Gili and Bali. It was my first time properly backpacking in three years. Little brother Ronan flew over for a couple of weeks and my mate Karol came for three.
The highlight of our trip was a three day hike to the summit of Rinjani Mountain. Rinjani, on the island of Lombok, is Indonesia’s second largest mountain and said to be the most beautiful in the country. It also happens to be an active volcano. But the last eruption was over a year ago, so things were pretty safe. The hike is notoriously difficult with reports of lots of people crying, puking and quitting. So of course, this is just the kind of “holiday” that calls out to me. The summit is just over 3700 meters and the volcano has a crater-lake on top as well as natural hot-springs. It’s a three-day hike with the goal being to reach the summit for sunrise on day three (which requires a 2:30am start).
I felt pretty confident about the hike to be honest because I’ve done longer and higher hikes before. But my confidence quickly dissipated after receiving a link to a tripadvisor page from Ronan. Reading the experiences/complaints of the other hikers, I reassessed the situation. I spent August hiking every weekend to get in decent shape, even hiking up to three times a week when possible. Unfortunately, most of the mountains around me in Seoul are about 600 or 700 meters high, so it certainly wasn’t perfect preparation.
The holiday plan was for us to climb the mountain as early into the trip as possible before the hedonism took tole on our bodies. But it took a couple of days to get orientated and travel from Kuta Bali, our meeting point, to Rinjani by public transport. And by the time we were ready to go, there was already a considerable dent in our four litres of duty-free Jameson whisky.
We intentionally didn’t book in advance as I’d learned from past experience that we could get it much cheaper if we haggled on arrival. It worked out perfectly well. We paid only 700,000 Indonesian Rupiah each. Much cheaper than anyone we met and half of the 1,400,000 the guidebook cited as the going rate.
Our group consisted of us three, four Germans, our guide and five porters. Everyone was real cool. The Germans were all university students and surprisingly well-traveled and worldly. The porters were nice, hardworking and friendly. And the guide, seemingly a teenager, was a cool kid, but appeared to be in the worst shape of the whole group. Perhaps due to his incessant cigarette smoking. In fact, we felt so bad for him on the first leg of the trip, Karol offered to carry his backpack for him.
I brought my phone on the hike and made a couple of short videos. It was my first time to ever try this so I apologise for both the video and narration quality.
And here in this second video you can see Ronan and me at the top of Rinjani, tired, but elated to have achieved our goal.
And this third video is kind of pointless I guess, but I hoped to show the view a little better from a different angle.
The highlight of our trip was a three day hike to the summit of Rinjani Mountain. Rinjani, on the island of Lombok, is Indonesia’s second largest mountain and said to be the most beautiful in the country. It also happens to be an active volcano. But the last eruption was over a year ago, so things were pretty safe. The hike is notoriously difficult with reports of lots of people crying, puking and quitting. So of course, this is just the kind of “holiday” that calls out to me. The summit is just over 3700 meters and the volcano has a crater-lake on top as well as natural hot-springs. It’s a three-day hike with the goal being to reach the summit for sunrise on day three (which requires a 2:30am start).
I felt pretty confident about the hike to be honest because I’ve done longer and higher hikes before. But my confidence quickly dissipated after receiving a link to a tripadvisor page from Ronan. Reading the experiences/complaints of the other hikers, I reassessed the situation. I spent August hiking every weekend to get in decent shape, even hiking up to three times a week when possible. Unfortunately, most of the mountains around me in Seoul are about 600 or 700 meters high, so it certainly wasn’t perfect preparation.
The holiday plan was for us to climb the mountain as early into the trip as possible before the hedonism took tole on our bodies. But it took a couple of days to get orientated and travel from Kuta Bali, our meeting point, to Rinjani by public transport. And by the time we were ready to go, there was already a considerable dent in our four litres of duty-free Jameson whisky.
We intentionally didn’t book in advance as I’d learned from past experience that we could get it much cheaper if we haggled on arrival. It worked out perfectly well. We paid only 700,000 Indonesian Rupiah each. Much cheaper than anyone we met and half of the 1,400,000 the guidebook cited as the going rate.
Our group consisted of us three, four Germans, our guide and five porters. Everyone was real cool. The Germans were all university students and surprisingly well-traveled and worldly. The porters were nice, hardworking and friendly. And the guide, seemingly a teenager, was a cool kid, but appeared to be in the worst shape of the whole group. Perhaps due to his incessant cigarette smoking. In fact, we felt so bad for him on the first leg of the trip, Karol offered to carry his backpack for him.
I brought my phone on the hike and made a couple of short videos. It was my first time to ever try this so I apologise for both the video and narration quality.
And here in this second video you can see Ronan and me at the top of Rinjani, tired, but elated to have achieved our goal.
And this third video is kind of pointless I guess, but I hoped to show the view a little better from a different angle.
1 comment:
NICE VIDEO *.* KK
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