I love trekking and climbing mountains, the challenge of looking at a peak high in the clouds and knowing that I’m going to be up there makes me want to run all the way to the top in one go. So when Peter and I were on Bali and I saw a poster for the sunrise trek to the top of Mount Batur, I knew I wanted to do it!
Mount Batur is an active volcano and one of the sacred mountains according to Hindu belief. It is located Batur village, Kintamani District, #Bali. It’s height is 1717 m above sea level and people usually hike it within 2-3 hours.
We signed up for it at a random local tour agency paying 550000 rupiah each. It doesn’t really matter which agency you choose, they all sell the same package and they use the same tour guides.
Our package included the following things:
- Pickup and return to our hotel
- A snack at the bottom of the mountain and breakfast at the summit
- An English speaking tour guide
- Entrance fee
Our itinerary looked like this:
• 02 AM: Pick up at the hotel
• 03 AM: Arrival at starting point of Toyabungkah village, morning snack
• 06 AM: Arrival at the summit of Mount Batur (sunrise point).
• 08 AM: Begin our descent to the finishing point of our trek (Toyabungkah village).
• 09.30 AM: Arrival at Toyabungkah village
• 11.30 AM: Stop off at a Balinese Coffee plantation
• 01.30 PM: Return arrival at the hotel.
Things we took with us:
- Hiking shoes (but non-slippery sneakers will do if that’s all you have)
- Long pants and a sweater
- A bottle of water
- Our phones for pictures
You’ll need a flashlight, but the tour guides have a stock of those so don’t worry of you don’t have one, they’ll lend you one for the trek.
As you can imagine, getting up at 1:30 AM wasn’t much fun, but we managed to get another hour’s sleep in the car on the way to the mountain.
We ate our banana pancakes when we got to the bottom of the mountain and started the trek up when we were done.
Our tour guide was a Balinese lady who does the same trek 4-5 times a week, getting up at 1AM every single time. She goes to sleep at 8 PM, earlier than her 5 year old.
You could climb the mountain on your own too, without a guide and avoid the steep fee which we paid. The path up is clear and easy to follow all the way up. But I would advise against doing the sunrise trek if you decide to go on your own, because that’s when it’s the busiest. If the locals see you have no tour guide, they won’t like it, maybe they won’t even let you start the trek. There are signs at the entrance that say ‘trekking only allowed with a guide’.
The first part of the journey was a proper concrete road, which turned into a steep rocky path as we progressed. It kept getting harder and harder as we were getting closer to the top, towards the end we had to use our hands to hold onto the rocks and climb on all fours. I don’t break sweat easily, but here I could feel it trickling down my back.
The temperature was quite low, maybe 8-10 Celsius before sunrise, about 15 Celsius on the top after the sun came up.
We finally reached the summit after about 2.5 hours. Our guide showed us the best place to be for a full view of the sunrise, which was just about to start. As I was sitting there, looking at the sky and the sheer beauty of it took my breath away. The summit was quite crowded but everyone fell silent when the ‘show’ started. It was quite the spiritual experience sitting in silence with so many other people, looking at the orange sky which was slowly filling up with colours.
Mount Agung was peaking out of the clouds in the distance right next to the sun.
I took so many pictures of it at every stage of the sunrise.
When it got completely light, the tour guide served us our breakfast of white bread and, eggs and bananas. I wasn’t very hungry so I only had a banana and we asked her for hot chocolate to warm us up.
Our fellow climbers
It was an amazing feeling to be in the sky above the clouds.
We took a few more pictures at different points of the summit, some of them selfies
I am tired but happy in this picture :)
and some of the monkeys that were happy to pose for us.
One thing to be careful about - there was no toilet there and nowhere to hide either, there were people everywhere. I really needed to go after the hot chocolate, so I found a place with a few tiny bushes and not that many people…
We started our descend after about 2 hours on the top, taking a very slippery shortcut. We really needed to pay attention, but some of us (including myself) still fell on their bottom a few times.
We saw this huge spider on the way down. One of the local girls played with it and said it was harmless, but somehow I felt better keeping my distance from it.
We arrived back at the car park around 10 AM and started off to our next stop, a place where they gave us some ginseng, coconut and other flavoured coffee to taste. I loved the coconut coffee andwe bought a cup of luwak coffee too, but I wasn’t that impressed with it.
We wrote about luwak coffee here: https://steemit.com/coffee/@peterveronika/the-best-coffee-comes-from-poop
We finally arrived back at the hotel around 12 PM, very tired but satisfied with our morning.
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