Mt Bromo : The full story

I was feeling the jitters. Due to recent developments in Ruzzle and R-language -i was unable to work. Ruzzle & R ofcourse being a nervous synonym for real life developments. i looked around. Harsha had just come back from a discussion. He looked whacked. "Perfect- I need to get out of this place and Harsha seems a vulnerable target". "Stop it- Ofcourse a vacation is good- stop thinking as if you're doing something wrong". My evil side and conscience had teamed up - life was much easier after they had joined forces instead of forever battling in my head. I was now feeling charged.

Singapore Friday : 8 pm >
Jetstar tickets to surabaya booked: Harsha's credit card used (ofcourse I'll pay him back); 200 sgd return (1 pax)
Hotel booked: 60 sgd/2 nights (1 pax)
Itinerary there: No clue

Singapore Saturday: 2 am>Dashboards created for up and coming marketing campaign; Red eyed and weary i crash. I suddenly realize that my camera isnt working. "Lets buy a camera" "Done'.

Singapore Saturday : 6 am>Up - ready ; move to airport; research on best super zoom camera out there: 50x canon sx50 hs: ~600 sgd. I have lost all concept of saving money by now. I have embraced the greenback side.


Surabaya touchdown: Far from the glass, concrete, sanitizer confines of Singapore - I smell fresh clean polluted natural air. Sweet chaos. Somewhere in my mind- i am smiling. Immigration requires us to pay around 30 sgd. Poor indians- forever prosecuted. I think of vowing on avenging this insult - but then i get distracted by my laziness.

We meet our driver- gaunt- stocky- spectacled- pale yellow guy- with a sickly sweet aura. My first impression of being a bit wary is perhaps wrong. He shows us around.

First viewpoint>  Lapinda- mud plains of old volcanic land collapse. Due to some fracking? - an entire village was swallowed up by the earth (AFAIK). Greed knows no bounds (mental note). The earth is burning up when we reach there. I get called- shah rukh khan - and a girl wants to take her snap with me. I'm nervous but also lapping up the adulation. Snap taken- we go around the place. Estimated hit : 10 sgd/person. Nothing really great( I hate this keyboard by now- stupid damned windows keep popping up because the windows key gets pressed somehow).


Lapinda:
 example of the seething earth heaving and blowing up hot smoke from level ground
+ example of how human greed and unregulated business development can kill
- really hot
= experience= 8/10


On the way from Lapinda to our hotel (Cemerah Indah), Night fell. This is a weird weird place. Sunset @ 5. It's east of singapore and one hour behind. Either singapore got something wrong (i think its got a relationship with hong kong) - or .. yeah- i think thats it.

Night's fallen. I exit our toyota 4 seater. Cash impact= 75 sgd for cab (37.5-1 pax).  I can hear Harsha's tears hitting the ground and oaths never to be deceived by me again. I get out and am hit by the cold. Ok- you need a sweater and a jacket here. I have 4 cotton tshirts for 4 days. I simply switch from serial processing to parallel processing now. Yeah- i was being smart there :(

I want to do so much- night photography, talk to people, dinner, jog, trek, etc. etc. I whittle down the list to
a. Talking to people to figure out the itineray b. Dinner

We start talking to the hotel manager. He mentions that if we share a jeep- our costs will go down. I immediately leap from our table to angmos/firang table next door. They turn us down cause they have already done everything and are leaving. I hear that they climbed a certain Mount Batok today. My mind is made up- Batok and then some.
I call my sister- she mentions Bromo, Sunrise viewpoint, waterfall, Pasir, Sebana.

This is the plan:

Day 1 (Sunday)

3am: Get up- goto Batok- climb Batok-see sunrise-get down (national park pass : 10 sgd/pax?)
7 am: back to hotel for breakfast
9 am to 5 pm: take round trip (75 sgd=37.5 sgd/pax?) =
a. Hit the savannah
b. waterfall
c. telletubby hills?
d. Pasir

Day 2 (Monday)
3 am: Sunrise view point jeep (16 sgd/pax - shared)
5.30 am: Bromo climb up stairs- stare into crater- get scared - come back
7 am: back to hotel for breakfast
12 pm: checkout
12-4: free and easy walking around the terrace farms around cemerah indah
4-12 am: kill time by reading marketing text books
12 am (Tue)- leave for Surabaya
4 am: reach airport
7 am: flight
As we all know- following the plan is tough work. This is what happened.
Sat early early morning/night: We got up miserably cold and stuffy nosed. I popped allergy pills. Scurried down to buy tourist shirts to add on to whatever nil protection i had on my corpus(?). Somehow walked to Batok- found a horse walking to the hill and we followed him around. I snapped-got shouted at for being slow- jogged back- fell- snapped- repeat. We reached Batok. Harsha: "Uhhh.. lets go back". My mind: "Uhhh.. lets go back". My mouth "Wait dude- there's a clearly defined path here- we'll reach up somehow. I'm there- no."
We wait for the morning rays to strike us. Harsha is also hoping I have a change of heart. No- my resolve is made of steel. Or steel is made of my resolve. Whatever. "There may be two of us and none of them-but that doesnt mean we'll go down without a battle. " With silent prayers on my lips and not so silent ones on H's - we trudge up. 15%- "Dude- lets go back" 30%-" You carry on" 45%" really man- i cant do it" 50%" Ok- I'm done"
I look up. Its scary. The sides are steep and I'm not feeling that great myself. I tell him to wait for 20 mins till i see if i can do it. I go up- its beautiful. Really. But noone is there on this beautiful mount besides us. I think it could be because its dangerous. At 75%- i reluctantly call it quits. I'm trembling- but I know i've stretched the limit.
50%- i dont know if Harsha is left. I've never been happier to hear his answer back when i shout.We trudge slowly back to base camp. This hill/mountain is a beautiful one.. Maybe someother day...
We take a bike ride back- 3 of us on a motorbike up a 45 degree incline. "When will this thing flip over". I eat breakfast. Too much. It's not my fault - its free.

With breakfast behind us, Batok was a distant memory. A distant failure which would leave my memory soon. As Harsha focused his dslr on a plant (while we readied for our next foray), I felt a stinging sensation which i recognized as jealousy. I had seen the beauty of a dslr snap of a flower. I am hesitant to admit that I hurried him up so that we would leave soon.

Have you ever thought of which is the best seat in the car and then strategized to occupy that? If you're reading this blog- you probably have.. so you relate. After much game theory - we both sat in the front seat- now the question was driver side - or window side. The battle was won without honor. With guilt, pettiness and jealousy - i soon developed a headache. that and the diesel fumes. I thought for 30 minutes that it was coming from a truck ahead of us... but then Harsha pointed out that it was probably from inside.

Stop 1: Sabena... Savanna ..

Long reed grass swaying in the wind, the smell of freshness, the gentle caress of leaves.. Muted.. we stared at the rolling hills decked in their finest golf green and bathed in flowers of all kinds. This was nature at its best... but..but I had seen this in Kaas- valley of flowers, India. I wasnt really that impressed. Harsha too seemed a bit out of place. We lolled around.. obscenely explored all the various angles of the flowers around us.. upskirts, down the cleavage.. each one of us fighting to find that facebook pic which would draw the most likes...


We hopped into the jeep again and I understood after 26 years what the difference between a car and a jeep was. You drive a car on a road <-> You drive a road with a jeep. I honestly (cross my heart) feel bad for the plants crushed under us. Next stop- some ramshackle tea plantation lookout point. I walked non-chalantly out "Kerala" I drawled. Somewhere out there- Karma was busily scribbling down Ingratitude points all over my name.


Next stop- after inhaling a lot of diesel fumes (there are some smells that you cant just get used to fyi), we reached the waterfall. Stop 2 ?: Waterfall. Waving our driver goodbye (and hoping he wouldnt leave us miles away from our hotel).. we intrepidly walked out to explore

 Bromo suburbs

Waterfall..
We got out drunkenly soaked with diesel fumes.The weather was not too warm or cold, humidity in the air.. I hadn't shaved for days.. but appearances were -well .. not of the highest concern at that moment. I looked around. A bit crowded (Indonesians, Thai and Malays).. but manageable. As we bottomed out, there was a horse to the right munching. A stream in front and a wooden log bridge ahead.  We were hit by the moisture first. The waterfall was comparatively small and thin- but it defiantly held on. When i say S&T- i mean compared to the normal badass WF's that you see in movies and stuff. It was still strong enough to probably send you over if you got too near it. I went into the water near it- cold but crowded with tourists. It's a tricky place. Sudden drops underneath - wouldnt reccomend it to everyone. It was ekadashi- i offered my prayers and felt a bit purer than normal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekadashi

We headed back and shopped a bit at the shacks- bought some stuff for the driver and we chugged off.

"Sabena" or Savannah
This place was really beautiful. Cold. Misty. Isolated. Empty. Barren. Grey
It was really like a "sea of sand". I would rate this as One of the best attractions there (if not the best). Out of the world actually. You could say one of THE places to see before you kick the bucket.
We walked around.. strolled.. soaked in the silence.. A jeep, a few bikes drove away in the distance. Harsha prayed while I plodded along around. We wanted to see the sun set- but decided to drive off while it was still day. We reached back- tired, drained but amazed- knowing that we had gotten our money's worth easily. Tomorrow Bromo awaited


Monday early morning:
The alarm bells ring. 2 am. Waking up for me is the toughest thing in the world. But i know the tour bus is waiting and in that 4-6 angry people. We dress up and I'm HIT strongly by the cold. I buy a tourist shirt- but i know im in trouble. Its freezing (5-10 degrees) out there.


we reach the place- its monday 3 am- its packed. Harsha and I split up- the poor guys's camera battery is over. I perch at a corner and am about to place my camera on the stone railing- when i realize its soaked wet with the morning dew. We wait for quite a while for the sun to rise- but its hidden by clouds. The crowds slowly start to disperse - but it still quite jam packed (arms lenght- people around). I look around for Harsha- and we start taking pics of the craters and the calderas ... I'm not too enthusiastic because of the crowds, commercialism, early morning drowsiness and the cold. We pay our obesiances to the Volcanoes (the view's really majestic now that i think of it)- and walk back. Harsha decides to pick a few shirts and we head back to the cab...


I left the viewpoint frozen. If there is ONE tip you can take from me when venturing to bromo- take a few woolens (I might be repeating myself). Later when I saw the snaps- i realized the jaw dropping beauty of the place. It's a place like none other and worth a visit if your body can take the jolts of a 4x4 8 hours a day.

The final stop was actually Bromo. Bromo by itself seems a weak pale shadow compared to Batok and Semeru- but it's like 0.3*infinity really.

When we reached the basecamp (:))of Bromo- we lolled around and negotiated with the horse guides to take us 1/2 way up. Basically Basecamp->1km walk/horse ride->steps->Bromo peak. The horse ride at the time was honestly nothing great. But the visual image of me on a horse straddling the great BTS national park - well priceless. Its almost like a Marlboro ad- save the rugged good looks, the cigarettes and the cowboy hat. The steps upto Bromo peak were a bit of a torture- my body had suffered enough over the last 2 days and i somehow reached the top.



One step too far: a.stage left: 80% chance of serious injury b. stage right: death by suffocation and/or burns

So there I was rooted to one spot, while Harsha skipped and hopped along the periphery. And then Wham- end of story- a misstep and he was scorched by the volcano. I'm kidding- but let that be a lesson to you. In the midst of all this fear and rooting to one spot- there was a european women in flats and a sleeveless skimpy overall lolling around reading her book and tapping away at various parts of the volcano. I was not impressed.
Sufficiently scared and having gingerely crossed out one item on the bucket list (i should have placed this near the end)- i triumpantly bid adieu.
We were rather tired at the end of all this (and so am I honestly now)- so we negotiated with a motorbike transport guy to take us back to our hotel (~2 kms uphill walk). Being the power bargainers and valuing the value of money- all 3 of us plopped onto the same bike which was gasping for breath by the end of the trip.

It was breakfast time. I wasnt very happy now- because it meant overeating with the same bland food that I had gorged on yesterday. I cant really stop myself from gorging on buffets.

The next 12 hours were possibly among the best .. we meandered across the vegetable terrace farms, got caught in a sudden downpour, took shelter in a stable, fought valiantly with the protectors of the valley (two dogs who wouldnt stop barking with us)- we employed the "Invisibility and in numbers there is strength strategy"-we crossed over with others.





We reached Singapore early Tue morning. All in all it was a trip worth every penny.. The body was sour.. my mind hadnt been in the best of places.. but even i recognized the sheer beauty of this amazing place..

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