Climbing up

The first hour took us gradually up through coffee plantations, past barking dogs and parts of the temple complex. We took a quick break and I went off into the bushes to answer the call of nature. I heard some rustling and saw 2 sets of glowing eyes moving up and down which frightened the life out of me. Then I heard a loud “Moooooo”. Bullocks, not monsters.

Onwards and upwards through the beautiful jungle for three hours on a very steep path. There was lots of scrambling and grabbing of exposed tree roots in order to get up. We barely stopped, yet I felt we were making very slow progress. I felt sick which was hardly surprising: I was slightly hung over, it was the middle of the night, I had had no sleep since the night before and my last meal had been a Krispy Kreme doughnut 8 hours ago. I stopped and ate a bun which helped.

At last, we came out of the forest and began the climb over steep rocks and boulders covered with graffiti. Who has the energy to vandalize rocks up there? It was a tough climb. A few times I felt like turning back. No one would know… We kept going and finally after about 6 hours, we reached the final ridge to the peak. At that point David’s head torch died. It was still dark so we stayed close together using just my light. Suddenly we were at the top and had about an hour to wait until sunrise. A very cold hour. It was freezing and really windy. We could see Rinjani on the island of Lombok in the distance. We were up that peak almost exactly a year ago to the day. This time, the weather was perfect. We watched the sunrise, took pictures, chatted to some of the other hikers – another 6 lunatics apart from us had climbed that night.

Photos HERE