When you’re standing on the edge of an active volcano, it’s neither the acrid rotten-egg reek of sulphur, nor the thick white vapour billowing up, silently blending into clouds scattered above, that humbles you.
It’s the sound – a steady roar, like a thousand jet engines zooming across the sky in one go. It’s not from above that this rumbling drone emerges but from way under, a depth not visible to the eye or fathomable to the mind.
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It’s the sound of the snoring giant that Jack must have heard as he clambered up the beanstalk. The sleeping beast whose mouth I was peering into, however, was Mount Bromo, one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, located in the Tennger Semeru National Park in East Java province. Volcanoes are a speciality of the Southeast Asian archipelago located in the earthquake and volcanic-eruption prone Ring of Fire.
‘I heard that just last week they threw a cow over the crater as a sacrifice so it doesn’t erupt,’ one of the laughing tourists tells me as I gape open-mouthed at the volcano. We were two of hundreds perched over the ridge of the crater, some taking selfies against the plumes of sulphur that rose behind them. When I was clambering up the rudimentary, steep stairway carved up the volcanic cone, I wasn’t aware I was heading up to stare a volcano in the face, let alone that there were chances of an eruption. I had just returned from viewing a spectacular sunrise over Mount Bromo from Love Hill, a peak of considerable height opposite Bromo at the other end of a stretch of volcanic desert.
(Mount Penjankan, 5km away from Love Hill, is the conventional vantage point – but it’s always packed with a stream of tourists.)
From our vantage point, on that cold, autumnal October morning, Bromo looked like a distant, surreal dream daubed in bursts of golden and burgundy plants, towering conifer trees and dappled sunlight filtering through layers of mist that made the stark volcanic desert glisten like a muddy lake. We were staring at a benign but evocative, real-life impressionist painting.
Contrary to my fears and the fellow-tourist’s black humour, the Monet-worthy vista wasn’t going to burst into lava and ash anytime soon. Unlike Mount Agung, which is spewing red smoke and glowing orange as lava oozes through its cracks at this very minute, there has been no recorded seismic activity around Mount Bromo in months. Were the volcanic deities appeased by the animal sacrifices of the Tenggerese community (an ethnic group of Javanese Hindus), who have lived around this 820,000-year-old volcanic massif (complex of mountains) since the 15th century, or, perhaps, the mountain had disgorged everything it had to during its last eruption in 2016?
For now, Mount Bromo is a gorgeous destination perfect for tourists looking for adventurous, extreme tourism.
Getting to Mount Bromo is a bit of an adventure. The 2,329 metre-high peak is around six-hour drive from Malang, East Java’s second-largest city. You can also come by bus from Surabaya, the capital of Java province. The six-hour drive doesn’t bring you much closer to the mountain. I slept at the Lava View Lodge in the closest Tenggerese village, called Ngadisari, in the Probolinggo region; the village is an ascending incline of traditional high-walled, colourful Tenggerese houses and budget-friendly lodges (don’t expect hot water) like mine. The actual volcano is an additional a two-hour drive spanning swathes of volcanic ash and Bromo savannah – green grasslands woven in with what looked like purple heather – stark and lush at the same time. The locals call it the Bukit Teletubbies due to its resemblance to the green hills appearing in the kids’ show of the same name. I for one am glad that Hollywood and Bollywood haven’t discovered the place.
These stunning views weren’t visible to me, one of a group of journalists from the Middle East, when the Indonesian tourism board packed us off in boxy little Toyota 4X4 jeeps at 2.30am. When I arrived at Love Hill, the sky was still starry, hundreds of 4x4s were parked across the narrow one-way road and hawkers selling winter jackets, beanies and hot ramen and snacks milled about, our mitten-clad hands were numb from the cold, and we hoped that the life-altering vista we were promised would be worth the incessant travelling and sleep-deprivation. Believe me you, I would repeat the journey just for the magic of what we saw – everything is a mystery until the sun rises and lifts the veil of darkness from the surrounding area, revealing a scene befitting Tolkien’s description of Middle Earth’s misty mountains; it is in the middle of nowhere, but more beautiful for it.
To get as close to the volcano as I did, you’ll have to come back down Love Hill on a jeep (the road is so narrow there are specific blocks of time where vehicles can only ascend or descend) and ride across the volcanic desert, a protected nature reserve called the Sea of Sand, in the jeep and then continue the journey further on horses that can navigate the ridges and gullies boiling lava has grooved into the surrounding landscape. The Tenggerese are skilled horsemen, so don’t get skittish if the last horse you rode was on a carousel.
As you ride horseback across the volcanic desert, silence hangs heavy in the atmosphere, the black ash sand throwing any colourful object in the surroundings into bright relief. A 13th century temple, the Luhur Poten, rises from the centre of the desolate plain with the fuming volcano as its backdrop. Our horseman tells me that the temple has never once been damaged by the volcano; the lava always finds a way to flow around it. Nothing grows in this bone-dry ash desert except a reverent silence.
The Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park is also home to eight other mountains including Mount Semeru, Java’s highest peak and a mystical mountain with a number of Hindu and Buddhist legends tied to it. It is Mount Bromo, however, that has achieved the apex of fame because while the destination itself is beautiful, the journey to it is equally magical. It’s a hard and long trip, much like a pilgrimage, but like a pilgrimage, every bit worth the effort.
Traveller’s checks
Emirates flies from Dubai to Jakarta. Take a flight from Jakarta to Malang (Garuda Indonesia flies daily) and from Malang hire a car or bus to Bromo.
Deluxe rooms at Lava View Lodge starts from Dh244 in off-peak season (January-May) and Dh299 in peak season (September-January); visit lavaview.lavaindonesia.com.
