Yogyakarta to Solo (68km)
I decided that the first leg of my Indonesian bike journey would be the 68km from Yogyakarta to Surakarta (Solo). Solo is the ancient capital of Java and about 2.5 hours of boring riding on a busy road away from Jogja. I had three couchsurfers lined up for Solo, but due to my delay leaving Jogja, the two locals could no longer host me. The third was a French guy that had to work until 9pm, so I decided to get a hotel the first night. All the cheap ones were really nasty, so I decided to splurge for the expensive $8.50 option. Since I got up that morning at 4:30am to go to the Borobudur Temple, I was pretty beat, so I just picked up some pizza and crashed. The next morning, I went to Phil’s place. It was small, with only one room and a little squat toilet bathroom. He only paid $40/month, so I guess you kind of get what you pay for. Phil was a great host. Since he worked close by his place, he decided to take his bike and leave me his 225cc Yamaha. What a day? I just cruised around town and read a book while chilling at a cafe for a couple hours.
That night Phil and I went to meet up with one of the two CSers, had some beer and chilled out. The next morning, we went out sightseeing before he had to go to work and ate some amazing BBQ chicken. I didn’t do much else in Solo, but did have a nice time relaxing, talking to Phil and cruising around on his motorbike.
Solo to Candi Sukuh (50km)
After two days in Solo I decided it was time to keep heading East. I heard there was a nice temple up the side of the nearby mountain, Gunung Lawu. Everyone I talked to said it’s very high up in the mountain and that I shouldn’t go there by bike…. challenge accepted!
Although only 50km away, the final 30km were all uphill. The first 20km were relatively easy, with me being able to ride consistently at around 20km/h. Then I saw the first signs for steep incline. And it was insane. My speed dropped to about 12km/h, then, as it got steeper, to about 7km/h. Every time I passed a local, they just looked at me and laughed when I said where I was going. That’s right, it was so slow I had time to converse with them before going out of earshot. When I finally took a break to get something to eat, one of the locals told me it was only 2km away, but that it was so steep there was no way I could ride up it. I’d like to think that if I wasn’t carrying 20kg of luggage on my bike that I could have done it, but I don’t know. I mostly walked, awkwardly pushing my bike. Luckily, with about 1km to go, a truck came by and let me put my bike in the back. This was my first ever big climb on a fully loaded bike.
In what has become very typical for me over the years, purchased a hammock just before the trip thinking it would be a great sleep system for this trip. My plan was to wild camp whenever I wasn't in a city, helping to keep my expenses down. It was definitely a lot different than Canadian forests from back in my army days. There were so many more sounds, weird animals, monkeys, etc. Kinda freaky. I woke up in time for sunrise, but the temple wasn’t going to open till 9am, so I decided not to wait and got going for my next destination. I could see the temple from outside and it didn’t seem all that interesting.
Candi Sukuh to Kediri, East Java (187km)
After the previous day, 5 hours to go 50km, I was excited for a relaxing ride down the mountain. However, this wasn’t going to be an easy day. I knew by looking at my GPS that I would be riding around 200km to reach the Central Javan city of Kediri.
When I initially checked my GPS and asked locals how to get to Kediri, people told me the ‘quickest’ route was to go over Gunung Lawu (Mount Lawu). However, that would entail another 15-20km of steep uphill through winding roads. I decided to go down and around the volcano instead. One of the benefits of riding in Indonesia is that unlike with normal mountain ranges, volcanoes are generally spread-out and can be circumnavigated fairly easily.
The ride down the mountain went by so fast. With a little direction from locals, I was able to go through tea plantations, which were absolutely amazing to see in the early morning. If not for having disc-brakes I might have died, as I approached speeds of 70km/h while braking. The damn things were smoking and smelled like burned break-pads, as I had to apply more brake than normal to control my speed around the hairpin turns. I could tell they were likely warped due to the excessive amount of heat and would likely need to be replaced after this trip. Oh well. Time for an upgrade.
After about 40km, I got on the ‘highway’ for the next 157km. Being relatively more tired after the previous days climb up Gunung Lawu, I was only averaging 24km/h. While taking a break at a rest-stop later in the morning I ran into my mountain climbing buddy Yelle, from Holland. He was taking a bus to Surabaya, so we chilled out and talked about the last few days. Eventually it was time to conquer the last 100km.
The roads were clogged with traffic and the long slow inclines were getting pretty tiring. I also wasn't used to the heat as it was significantly hotter than Malaysia, so I began to time the climbs with the slow-moving double-transports that would pass by at a snail's pace. I would grab on to the hinge by the doors at the rear of the truck and let them tow me up the hill. It worked relatively well, but once in a while the drivers would notice what I was doing. Since it was a bit of a dangerous stunt, they would ease over towards the shoulder, leaving me no choice but to let go, so that I wouldn't hit the gravel shoulder. Another tactic I learned, was to get right behind the transports as it would eliminate air-resistance, as I could follow at a much faster pace. However, this was significantly more dangerous, since any type of hard breaking could result in me crashing into the back of the truck.
Either way, I made it to Kediri about 30 minutes after sundown. An 11-hour day on the bike, with 7 hours 45 minutes in the saddle…. covering 187km. My previous record was a 170km race done in 4 hours 45 minutes. This was considerably slower but considering the baggage and that I was riding a mountain bike…. not too shabby.
