Bucket List: Climbing an active Volcano, Mount Bromo
Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia
This was a previous article written by myself and posted in this travelogue blog in Dec 2014. Mount Bromo was the first active volcano which I had climbed during my travels. A planned trip to climb Japan's much revered Mount Fuji in 2020, also an active volcano, was postponed indefinitely due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Located in the eastern part of the island of Java in Indonesia, Mount Bromo is an active volcano. Its local name is Gunung Bromo. At an altitude of about 2,329 meters (about 7640 ft), Mount Bromo is not a particularly high peak and is actually quite accessible to the average tourists.
Smoke rising from the crater of Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia (2002)
Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia (2002)
I climbed the peak of Bromo during a visit in 2002 when I was visiting Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia after the capital, Jakarta.
Mount Bromo is located within a nature reserve. We hired a local guide who drove us to the foot of the volcano, in the middle of a large plain. The guide then demonstrated to us by throwing a rock into the air and asked us to listen intently as the rock struck the ground. We were amazed that when the rock hit the ground, it made some kind of splashing sound; much like the sounds made when a rock was thrown skywards and dropped into a pool of water. This effect was due to physical properties of the soft volcanic soil that surrounded Mount Bromo.
We were then "transferred" to other guides who had mules and were asked to mount the mules which then trod up the relatively gentle slopes of the volcano. After a couple of minutes, I requested to dismount and continued up the slope on my own as I gently led the mule with me. Kind of felt cool being a farmer or shepherd for once! As an animal lover, it just did not sit right (both literally and figuratively) with my moral values to ride on the mule.
Mules were used as rides for tourists to climb the slopes of Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia (2002)
Mules and their handlers at the foot of Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia (2002)
At the top of Bromo, we could immediately tell that it was indeed an active volcano. The air was filled with the smell of sulphur and we could see smoke rising from the crater. At some of the points around the peak, we were actually separated from the edge of the crater only by a flimsy wooden fence which had probably seen better days.
Soon, we departed from the peak and walked down the gentle slopes. My maiden trip to the peak of an active volcano was completed in a matter of a few hours. The experience though, will stay with me for a long time. This was one of the first travel bucket list items that I had achieved.
The gentle slopes of Mount Bromo; on the way down from the peak, Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia (2002)
The sparse vegetation near Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia (2002)
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