Stairway to Heaven
At 3:30 a.m., I am rudely jolted from my sleep by a door-thumping wake-up call. Through the walls of my room I can hear the whinnying of horses–the Tenggerese guides have arrived. After donning several layers of clothing, I step out into the Javanese night. Although we are only 800 kilometres south of the equator, the mountain air is frigid. It is a short stroll to the top of the cliffs where the guides wait. Wrapped in blankets with only their eyes showing, they stand mute and still like great sleeping bats, the vapour rising from their horses’ nostrils wreathing them in ghostly halos.
As I approach, the tribesmen start shouting out prices. I hand over some rupiahs and choose a white pony. His owner, a broad-faced youth with a floppy, wide-brimmed hat, steadies the animal as I swing up into the saddle. It will take about 30 minutes to reach the base of the volcano. I tighten my grip on the reins as we descend into the darkness. The track flattens as we complete our passage down the cliff road and turn onto the crater floor. My guide sets a brisk pace, leading the pony with a rope and using a flashlight to prevent us from falling into a fissure. He clucks to the horse periodically, snapping a reed switch whenever the pony shows signs of skittishness.
The object of this early morning trek lies directly ahead—Mt. Bromo, a 2,392 metre-high volcano, located in the rugged highlands of East Java. Although it has not produced a major eruption in modern times, Mt. Bromo is still active, venting prodigious amounts of steam and ash and the occasional rumbling boom. On June 8, 2004, two people were killed and several others were injured when an explosion of gas and magma burst from the crater’s mouth. Mt. Bromo, whose scarred and eroded contours resemble the hollowed-out shell of a decayed molar, is one of five volcanoes that rise from within one huge and extinct crater–the Bromo-Semeru massif. These weathered peaks lie within a vast lava desert, a “sand sea” enclosed by 300-metre-high cliffs. By day, the sweeping vista, illuminated by shafts of celestial light and enveloped in swirling mist, stirs no sense of deja vu. You know you have never been here before.
As one might surmise, getting to Mt. Bromo is not easy. It took us eight gruelling hours and five different modes of transportation (plane, taxi, bus, van and jeep) to reach the site from the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta. Improbably enough, someone has built a hotel here atop one of the cliffs. All of the hotel’s guests come to this remote outpost for the same reason—to cross the sand sea by horseback and climb to the top of Mt. Bromo to watch the sunrise.
Our guides for the trip, the Tenggerese, are the last surviving descendants of the Hindu Majapahit Empire, which ruled East Java from 1292 until its overthrow in by rebellious Muslim princes in 1520. Their population of 40,000 is centred in villages scattered throughout the isolated Tengger mountains. These Tibetan-featured folk follow a blend of Hindu, Buddhist and animist beliefs and survive by the cultivation of vegetables and by providing horses for the daily tourist pilgrimages to Bromo.
The first streaks of pink are appearing in the eastern sky as we complete our dusty ride to the volcano. I dismount at its base and begin climbing the “stairway to heaven,” a steep succession of 256 stone steps leading to the peak. A sign has been posted near the top, informing visitors how to behave. As is often the case in Indonesia, something has been lost in the translation. This one reads, “Do Not Leave Letter.” Puffing with exertion, I clamber up the last steps to the summit. It is now light enough to appreciate the haunting desolation of the landscape. A blistered, iron-grey moonscape stretches to the horizon. Immediately to the west rises Mt. Batok, its towering walls furrowed like a giant lemon squeezer. To the south lies a plateau dotted with valleys and lakes that extend to the foot of Mr. Semeru, Indonesia’s highest peak. To the east and west are sheer ridges separated by wooden ravines, their verdant contours smooth as the baize of a billiard table in the soft morning light.
Far below, plumes of steam belch from Bromo’s monstrous circular shaft. Sulphurous fumes billow around me in a noxious, choking mist. A shift in the wind exposes a greenish patch pulsating eerily near the crater’s cracked and pitted cone. As I gaze into the hissing abyss, the Tenggerese legends of fire gods and giant ogres suddenly assume a new resonance. A ledge encircles the volcano’s rim, making it possible to walk around the peak. The trip, however, is not for the faint of heart; the path narrows to a metre in spots and the footing is treacherous. A misstep could be fatal, as there is nothing to stop one falling into the gaping cauldron, where as the Tenggerese know, departed souls take the swift underground route to Mahameru, “the highest temple.”
And too, there is another hazard, fellow tourists, now arriving in droves–boisterous Germans wearing fluorescent windbreakers and tight, black stretch pants and Japanese clad in ski masks and down vests. The Indonesians, giddy with excitement, are the noisiest of all. One of them has brought along a police siren, which he sets off at regular intervals. Some of the more adventurous begin to scale the steep ridge angling up Bromo’s eastern rim. I watch them rising higher on the horizon, a row of tiny stick figures silhouetted against the salmon-coloured sky.
Almost everyone has a camera and there is considerable jockeying to get the best vantage point to photograph the coming dawn. As the moment nears, the exuberance of the crowd dissipates; people lapse into silence, lost in their own thoughts. The sun, when it finally appears, rises suddenly like a blood-red explosion, saturating the surrounding hills with luminous colour. The Indonesians call the sun “mata hari”–the Eye of God. Witnessed in this supernatural setting, suspended midway between heaven and hell, it is a description that none of us would dispute. Our lack of sleep and the morning chill are instantly forgotten as the assembled throng breaks into spontaneous applause.
Filed under: Destinations
That picture is beautiful. I am just too afraid of valcanoes, 10 000 people died directly from the volcano and a further 82 000 died from famine. The volcano is located at Tambora, Sumbawa in Indonesia. Recently a volcano erupted in Monserrat, West Indies. It devastated farms, houses and streets became rivers of lava.