MOUNT BROMO

A five hour train ride from Yogya to Surabaya, a taxi to the bus station - the only place I ever felt unsafe in Indonesia mainly thanks to Doni’s warnings of keeping your eye on your wallet. Pickpockets, cutthroats and brigands brushed passed but my wallet-on-a-chain and clenched fists held firm. I didn’t see the point in two four-foot eight porters trying to lift, carry and struggle with my one rucksack, so I carried it, my daypack and Doni’s camping equipment to the amazement of passers-by, I guess this superhuman feat also helped ward off trouble as I wouldn’t mess with someone twice my size and strength.

One mini-bus ride, one yute and one Jeep ride later, we arrived at Bromo, Doni’s home town around dusk. With corn-cob fields making way for cabbage and spring onion fields as we gained altitude, Mount Bromo loomed at the end of the behemoth of a caldera; her peak dominating the night sky like the setting for Tolkien’s denoument. What was that about a ring again? At 3,000 feet, the environment was strangely Alpine, the weather crisp, clear and cold and, with other scarf-clad adventurers, photographers and Teutonic accents interrupted only by the sip of mulled wine, the feeling was bizarrely Christmassy. I half expected to see the ghost of Nat King Cole roasting chestnuts on an open fire and I pined for one of my mum’s mince pies. With Brandy Butter, just a few hundred miles from the equator. How does that work?

Anyway, at 4.00a.m. my alarm broke my three hour sleep and it was time to don two pairs of long socks, my army trousers, T-shirt, shirt and Khaki jacket Doni bought for me and drive in the 4x4 to the viewpoint. After a sugary tea to wake my exhausted brain immediately followed with a Milo hot chocolate to act as an extra layer, we trekked the few hundred metres in the dark to the top of 2770 metre Mount Penanjakan.

Left on my own for he had seen this many times before and with the wind-chill factor it must have been almost freezing, I found my spot like a Hammersmith chav eagerly awaiting a Ravenscourt Park, November the fifth firework display and shivered until the sun came up. No hot-dog stands, knife-crime or candy floss here though; just toughened, foolhardy adventurers like me plus a couple of German lesbians with a point to prove.

When the sun broke the rocky horizon, the aforementioned muff-divers expensive, 90mm Leica lenses flashed magnesium at the mountain twenty miles and burning star ninety-three million miles away to the east. Think about it. Engage brain. A decent flash will only carry twenty metres. Chilled to the bone, the giver of life and heat raised her head above the wisps of pink and orange clouds which sailed across the blue sky like Admirals Cup yachts. Reds and Yellows from my Cheggar’s Plays Pop childhood lit up the sky and the view was awe-inspiring. A grin transformed my face, like the grin when you drive too fast on your scooter at home in Thailand. This was the best panorama I had seen in all my thirty-four years.

To the west, the extinct Gunung Batok (2440m) sat in the foreground, perhaps readying to go to war again one day, dressed in her combat-camouflaged green vegetation and brown-earthed cone. The cement-grey Gunung Bromo belched out plumes of steam while the region’s Daddy - Gunung Semeru (3676m) grumbled pyroclasts in the distance, carried in the wind off into the stratosphere. Three volcanoes and two eruptions for the price of one. Pictures paint a thousand words so I’ll shut up… Here we go…

On the sea of sand we drove to the Hindu Temple and for the first time in years I rode a horse. The kuda in the local tongue didn’t look big enough to carry me at only a few hands taller than pre-requisite fourteen hands that makes the difference between a pony and a horse. But boy he was strong. Led by his owner, he walked me up the steep sandy slopes slipping only twice on the precarious skree. Climbing the individually numbered 250 steps carved into the side of Mount Bromo without the aid of my kuda I made the top. The fumeral was spewing steam out as tent-dwelling , white-suplhur mining aborigines caught money thrown at them by tourists in nets like tiny airborne crabs. This was insane, these people lived inside a volcano. Standing on the precarious, metre-wide ledge I took a few photos and videos of the caldera below that had made this half-Alpine, half-lunar landscape which all sit within a Mongolian looking desert.

My horse led me back down to near the temple and it was time for me to go for a little run. Surprised by how quickly you remember, like never forgetting how to ride a bike, how to ride a horse, we walked, trotted, cantered (well I didn’t canter, I can never get the right rhythm - a bit like sex when you and your partner make different strokes for a few seconds) and finally galloped off into the distance. This was Bagus! Until, that is the horse went crazy and headed full pelt towards a building. It would not stop. The commands I assumed were international - “Yahhh!” and kicking in with your heels seemed to speed him up pretty well but “Whoooaaa!” and eventually “STOPPPP!” did not. He slammed on his back-brakes three yards from the building then stopped. Turns out he wanted to have sex with another horse. I pulled on the reins, directing him left, out of the alcove and away from the saucy little minx he had his eye on, but he went left. Perhaps this was like a helicopter - left being right replacing up being down. Nope, nothing was working, he had a mind and horse hard-on of his own. Eventually steering him and his foot-long equine erection away, we galloped for a good three miles - The only thing I knew would stop him was the cliff-face. So we sped towards it, as if I were playing a game of chicken with a horse. My instincts were right and he did not kill us both by running straight into the looming wall; his self-preservation bottling before mine. After some coaxing to turn round, we galloped back perfectly. Man and beast in perfect unison, I am proud to say I lost myself in the moment and it was great. I must start riding again soon. Horses as well as girls.

We pelted along towards the Jeep, but again the kuda gila would not stop. Nearly passing his owner he braked violently and turned to the left, throwing me to the floor. That’s one way to get off a horse I suppose. At least I remembered to take my left foot out of the stirrup and jump the opposite way to the way the horse was falling. There is another way where you bring the horse down on you but I’m not a stuntman in a cowboy film and my self preservation was more important this time. Fuck the horse’s safety - he had a death wish. I roly-polyed to a halt and dusted myself off, laughing. Doni took my camera so I could have a picture of me and my beast of burden and I mounted once more. Now you know I said this horse was crazy, well… the second I got back on, it bolted. Walk to gallop like Richard Hammoond’s 0-60mph in a matter of seconds. We were heading for terrain I knew the crazy fucker could not handle at this speed and there was nothing I could do; no commands worked, no amount of tension on the reins helped. Best get a foot out of the stirrup and ready to push off with the other, but I had no way of knowing which way he would fall. Down he went, legs splayed north, south, east and west and over his head I went landing like a marine but with a horse as a parachute. For some stoopid reason, my first thought was of him bolting again so as he scrambled to his four feet I grabbed the right stirrup and manoeuvred myself back round, out of the reach of any skull cracking, brain haemorrhaging, kicks-like-a-mule, killer back legs.

And so on to my next adventure -- driving a four-by-four Jeep on the Mongolian-looking desert. Doni slid all over the place in the sand as we found somewhere with nothing or no people to crash into. After a driving lesson which consisted of telling me which was the clutch, brake and accelerator and where first and second gear were (I knew all of this already) we swapped seats and I drove; my driving instructor sitting in the passenger seat. Thirty seconds later after just one short hop, as to plan Doni took my camera and shot the short video you can find here. Doni said I was a quick learner and that I was good a good driver so then we drove to what my guide has Christened “Teletubbie Mountain”

I had viewed the one of most-envied sunrises on the planet, seen the most spectacular natural vista imaginable, watched two volcanoes erupt, climbed one of them, ridden across a desert on a crazy horse which threw me twice, driven a Jeep and had a cup of tea all before breakfast.

Not bad going eh?