Kediri to Malang (115km)
Kediri was a nice little city. I found a festival that happened to be going on and got to see a traditional Javanese puppet show. I grabbed some great local food and just enjoyed the moment. Ultimately, I decided to continue on to Malang the next day. On the way out of town, I happened upon some traditional dancing and a parade. The costumes and masks were quite impressive and from what I gathered, all emotion has to be shown through body language, since the dancer’s face is covered by a mask.
As far as riding goes, this was a pretty depressing ride. With constant rolling hills and knowing full-well that Malang is way up in the mountains, every time I finished a climb and started descending again, I knew there would be another big climb before long. To make matters worse, around 40km into the ride it started to rain. It didn’t stop for the rest of the day. I had no choice but to press on as I wanted to reach Malang before nightfall.
This was also the day that I realized that you should never ask an Indonesian about distances. Because they clearly have to idea. I asked one guy at a gas station when I was near Wilingi how far to Malang and he said 85km….it was 55km away (good news). I was so wet that I didn’t want to check my phone’s GPS, not wanting to take the chance of damaging it. When I reached the top of the damn, I asked another guy how far to Malang, and he told me I only had 15km left to go. Great! So, I decided to push it and tried to get a real good ride in. After 15km I saw a sign that said I still had 15km to go. I was annoyed, to say the least. The day progressed from people looking at me riding, smiling and saying, ‘hello mister’, to people looking at me completely drenched and laughing.
The joke was on them. My ride was nice and cool, although a tad bit wet. I had some amazing hill climbing sessions on my MTB, loaded with 20kg of luggage, and reached Malang just as the sun was going down. I checked into my hotel, washed my bike, myself, my clothes, and had some amazing Chinese food. I was asleep by 9pm.
Malang & Bromo
Malang
Although getting to Malang was quite difficult, especially considering the weather, the city itself was a good place to enjoy some down time. Although I only intended to stay for 3 or 4 nights and then carrying on to Mt. Bromo, on the advice of local CouchSurfers I decided to rent a motorbike for the trip to Bromo and leave my excess baggage at the hotel. All in all, I spent 8 nights in Malang, including the side trip to Bromo.
Knowing that I would arrive in Malang near the end of the day and after a long 120+ km ride, I pre-booked my hotel room for 1 night. Although the place was nice, and the staff were great, it was so noisy in the morning that I couldn’t fall back asleep after the morning prayers, since all the staff were sitting in the hallway talking on their phones. While out looking for a new hotel, I came upon a cycling event with over 1000 cyclists. Unfortunately, it was almost over, but that didn’t stop some guy from dragging me up onto the stage to tell everyone about my trip. I got a free super-sweet iced tea for the effort. I'm really not sure what it was all about, but it was a pretty cool intro to a new city.
After checking into my new hotel, I met up with a local CouchSurfer named Karnia, and she took me to the town of Batu (rocks) up in the mountains to check out a zoo and a waterfall. All-in-all it was a pretty normal day, getting to see things through the eyes of a local. Karnia was stoked to have the chance to practice her English. One interesting thing that happened was when I accidentally shocked myself by touching the safety wires of the Hyena pen while trying to get a picture. I can’t really describe how much it hurt other than to say it felt like I got punched full force in the stomach. Luckily, I didn’t drop my camera into the pen.
While in Malang, I decided to organize another karaoke night with local CouchSurfers. It worked out quite well as most of the people didn’t know each other yet. We rocked out for 2 hours and then went to a coffee house till midnight. I met some really great people during these 8 days in Malang. Notably, Karnia, my travel buddy on my second day. Pray, my coffee drinking/football watching friend whom I met up with in Bali while he was on a short 5-day trip. Yekti, one of the cool karaoke girls, and Fanela, my party buddy and hot springs partner before leaving.\
Bromo
The trip to Bromo was pretty amazing. The drive itself was awesome, with kilometer after kilometer of mountainous farms, where people work on incredibly steep fields. Typical to any place that is touristy, I came across a ‘tourist information’ stand where the guys told me the road ahead was closed but that I could stay in a homestay and get a truck down the mountain the next morning. I almost believed them, but then decided to go check it out. Further up the road, I was stopped again by a group of guys touting some homestays and telling me the road is closed. I eventually reached a gate in the road where two guys ran to me telling me its closed but that I could get a truck down the next day. I told them I already saw people exiting through the gate and just went and lifted it over my head and drove on.
Apparently, they weren't lying. It was ‘closed’ because it had yet to be blessed by the local religious leaders. It was an amazingly steep switchback all the way down to the Sand Sea on the inside of the caldera. A caldera is the inside of a former volcano. Driving across the sea was a challenge and just as I was about to reach the road up to the town on the other side, I met a German dude named Christian that was walking to Mt. Bromo, so I decided to join him and check it out right away. Mt. Bromo is a growing volcano inside the caldera of what was once a super-volcano. What a sight! As you walk up the steps, you begin to smell the sulfuric acid in the air. You eventually reach the rim of the volcano where the guardrail is falling apart. As you look down, you can see smoke billowing in the bowels of the earth. Absolutely amazing! To think that this volcano is active and regularly erupts is a little bit scary. Back in 2004 it erupted and killed two tourists standing on the rim. And a month before I was there it belched out some lava rocks. It’s really not somewhere you want to spend too much time standing. Christian and I doubled on my bike across the sand sea and got to the hotel just as the rain was arriving. That night I met Tony, a French guy doing pretty much the same trip as me, but on a Vespa. He bought it in Yogyakarta and was planning to drive all the way to Lombok before selling it and flying home.
Tony and I decided to drive up the start of the hiking portion the next morning to catch the sunrise over Bromo and Semeru. Semeru is the highest volcano in Java, standing at 3600m. The sunrise was over-rated, but still worth getting out of bed for. After getting some breakfast Tony and I took our motorbikes across the sand sea and just cruised around for a couple hours, climbing the other side of the caldera, while trying to get to some mountainous lakes close to Semeru. We never made it there because Tony’s vespa had some mechanical issues but managed to limp his bike back to the town where he was able to get it checked out. Good times, nonetheless. Tony and I have roughly planned on meeting up in the Gili Islands around new year's.
The drive back to Malang was absolutely miserable as it rained the entire way, and even though I had a rain jacket, it did little to keep my lower half warm and dry. Needless to say, I got sick, and it made cycling to Bali a real pain.
