Birthday on Dempo and Historic Bengkulu

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Dempo is a hulk of a mountain, and one of the few peaks in Sumatra over 3,000 metres. It dominates the landscape at the southern end of the Bukit Barisan mountains in South Sumatra, an area that’s important for Sumatran tigers. It’s not an easy mountain to get to, requiring a 6 hour drive from Bengkulu or Palembang.

We joined the four-day Java Lava trip organised to to coincide with Ascension Day (national holiday) – the Friday also happened to be my birthday and we thought that camping in the meadow below Dempo’s crater at 3,000 m would be a good place to spend it. We were also going to test out our new, fabulous Hilleberg tent.

Ternate & Tidore

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Using a pinch day before Waisak day, we took a four day break to the volcanic islands of Ternate and Tidore islands in eastern Indonesia’s North Maluku province. It’s a four hour direct flight from Jakarta to Ternate, which we chose to do on the rather brutal red eye that leaves Jakarta at 1 am and arrives in Ternate at 6am. If this was not much fun for us, it was even less fun for our friend Olivier who had just arrived in Jakarta from Vancouver on Friday lunchtime. Still, we all got a bit of sleep on the plane and arrived safely in Ternate, a landing that involves circling clockwise around the volcano and dropping to land on the runway (at the second attempt in our case).

Gunung Slamet

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At the end of April we joined Java Lava for a trip to climb Gunung Slamet in Central Java. The travel novelty was getting the train from Jakarta to Tegal to start the hike rather than having to fly. Andy and I took the train from Bogor on Friday afternoon and spent a couple of hours at Gambir station watching the buildup to the royal wedding in a café. The train journey takes about 4 hours and was very comfortable in the AC executive coach with table service for drinks and food (better than a UK train journey any day!).

Bukittinggi – a taste of the Minangkabau cultural landscape and two volcanoes

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After climbing Kerinci, we had a great time in and around the mountain resort town of Bukittinggi. We had a bit of R&R and did some “normal” tourist stuff, before our legs recovered and we were tempted again to head off the beaten track to climb Gunungs Sago and Singgalang.

Based on a recommendation from a traveller in Kersik Tua, we stayed in the great Kartini Hotel. It’s kind of caught in a time warp, but is clean, has hot water and we took the great top floor room. The staff are friendly and serve up a decent simple breakfast. For the fives times daily call to prayer, the place literally vibrates from the speakers from the mosque opposite. Part of the fun in Bukittinggi.