Being an avid runner, I like to travel around Southeast Asia to take part in marathons. Budget airlines comes to my choice, and somehow I always chose Air Asia because it is reliable and I just love the atmosphere in the cabin. The food they serve is another strong pull for Air Asia, with many choice of hot meals and snacks at affordable prices.
Trekking in Bali
When it comes to Bali, most people will think about surfing, diving and other water sports activities. But Bali is actually home for two beautiful treks, Mt Batur and Mt Agung. Having done the Mt Batur trek a few years back, I decided to go back to Bali and try out the Mt Agung Sunrise trek for my preparation of another race in Sabah.
Mt Agung
Mt Agung is actually volcanic and is about 3031m in height. The Balinese believe that it is the replica of Mt Meru, which is considered the axis of the world. The temple round the foot hill of the mountain, Pura Bersakih is also frequently visited by local worshippers and foreign tourists.
The mountain is an important sightseeing destination for many foreigners, it is best viewed from afar with clouds covering the side of its peak.
The Trek
For sunrise, all treks whether to Mt Batur or Mt Agung will begin around the wee hours of the morning around 1 am. Having been to Bali almost every year, my good friend Dewa arranged for the car to pick me up at my hotel in Ubud and we proceeded on a one and half hours drive to the Pura Bersakih temple. You will be surprised that sunny Bali can get really cold at night in the mountains. There I met my guide Gede. We met other groups , mainly Westerners, and local Indonesians, with their guides. The guides were well prepared with really thick extra clothing, food and even hot flask with hot water.
After signing in our names with the park ranger. We proceeded on to the trek up. Gede did some simple prayers at the temple before we went up. I guess that was for safety purposes and Balinese people are very respectful of the gods.
Having done a couple of trails around Southeast Asia, I thought Mt Agung should not be a problem. But the cold and the strong wind and volcanic terrain, the ascend up is really not an easy feat. I must say, one must have at least done some cardio work outs seriously back home before attempting the climb. The foothill began with some vegetations, as we ascend, the vegetation got lesser and lesser. Eventually only stones and rocks were left, the strong wind nearly blew me away a couple of times and as we go higher, the temperature got lower and lower. It was totally dark everywhere, luckily with our headlights, we could only see a trickle of white light climbers as we proceed to climb up the mountain. The most amazing thing was the starry sky above us, this sort of night scene can never be found in big cities.
A trekking stick will definitely come in essential here as towards the peak, there were nothing to grab but rocks, and mind you some of these rocks are unstable. Our well prepared guides, wore some beanies, scarves and some even gloves. Some of them brought the extra clothing in case of hypothermia, which climbers suffered from too cold temperature.
As we were pretty early, we took many small breaks here and there in between as the peak is too cold to wait for another two to three hours.
Gede and the rest of the guides even started to do a mini camp fire to keep all of us warm, and offered us food and hot drinks.
Just before the dawn breaks, we moved on for our finaly ascend up to the peak to wait for the amazing sunrise. Tighs and feet were already getting sore at this point, but all of us were enthusiastic and climb up faster to the peak to wait for the sunrise.
At the Peak with Sunrise
All exhausted and cold up at the peak, now I finally understand why the guides preferred to wait lower below. The wind was uncontrollable and its was simply cold, I was clattering and shivering all over. After about forty five minutes wait, the horizon began to light up. It was an amazing scene as towards the west side it was still dark. Some of the trekkers brought professional cameras and all of us started snapping away.
Slowly as the sun began to rise, we finally saw our surrounding, all around us were clouds! It was like a sea rolling with clouds not waves! The sunrise was amazing, definitely worth our efforts to climb up there.
Everyone started to get excited and too pictures everywhere. I must say around the peak everywhere is really Instagrammable.
We stayed there amazed with the scenery for another hour or so before making our way down to the temple.
Afternote
The Mt Agung trek was really memorable, and if you are an avid photographer or simply a nature lover, make sure you put Mt Agung trek in your bucket list.
