Malang
Our following stop, at friend's
friends house ;) Very helpful chaps, facilitated us a room in the
flat and a scooter. Very kind of them, and so much easier for us! We
were even picked up with a car in the halfway to their house, so
nice.
From there we headed towards to
the Batu Hills and to the foothill of the Anjuno-Welirang, the steamy
volcano embedded in such beautiful and staggering surroundings!
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| yeah..graves... ^^ |
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| The most beautiful graveyards I've seen! Dutch. |
And obviously what mostly took
our breaths away and shook us incomparably
to anything else we have seen so far was BROMO volcano.
Out-of-this-world views, moon-alike landscape and the ash floating
around with such a velocity, wow! Swirl of air forming little
tornadoes over the extending mounds of volcanic residues and, further
down, over the meadows, and dusty sand storm soaking us up impeding
our way through to the foothill of the volcano.
Bromo, the first one we had
just at hand, climbed up on the crater and looked down towards the
vast steamy hole in the cone's neck. It
was exhaling so much steam and the sound of it, incredible. We were
there, gazing down motionless,
utterly
stunned!
Some of the Bromo's highlights:
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| on the way to the foothills of Bromo... |
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| it's getting dusty...almost there it seems. |
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| up to the clouds, to the top! |
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| astounding, out-of-this-planet views! |
heavily steaming insides
It's unbelievable how diverse
our Earth is, until you don't see with your own eyes what's actually
around you, you'd never know (as simple as that). We were there, face
to face with an unpredictable volcano murmuring
upon us, steaming out loads of white, dense cloud and
releasing such an overwhelming sound of boiling water one just thinks
it's got such a great power that wiping us out of this planet might
be just a matter of coincidence. What if I rolled down the slope
there, in the crater, falling just in the middle of the volcanic's
jaws? We are such tiny little things, fragile and weak. It's nice to feel the power of nature so close, to realize
how powerful and mighty it is, and
how much depends on it. It's not us who rules the world, at the very
end, it'd be nice if everyone could feel it at least once in a while
in his/her life, I reckon. It'd be educative and eyes-opening enough
to keep it in mind in everyday life, to live it in consent with what
surrounds us and respect a little bit more. Traveling in Asia gives one a
wider perspective on how in-depth the surface of the planet we live on
is used up, depleted
of fertility, biodiversity and how much deprived of water
resources. People use resources so unevenly it goes beyond our
perception! Facing so many inequalities, on every corner, I
recurrently think of owning a piece of land, becoming self-reliant
and staying aloof from all the world's maze, living consciously within
the natural environment, as everyone should. Trees and workable land is all we need,
like, really. Well, sooner or later am gonna end up as my own lot's creator and carer,
ha!
Another spectacular and
transcendentally pampering our senses place we visited was: IJEN.
Sulfur's yielding spot and a
great crater with steamy turquoise water.
Whenever in Java – it has to be on must-see list, just as Bromo,
definitely! A long, steep way up, rewarded
with magnificent and indescribable views
though. Horrible and heart-breaking is to see those men carrying
loads of sulphur in heavy lumps in their baskets, upon their
shoulders, plodding along in their wellingtons. Sweat dripping down
your face and those incredible men ardently and vividly pacing up and
down, either carrying sulfur on their shoulders or pulling it along
behind them on the trolleys, just unbelievable. And the worst part is
actually not this, the whole 'fun' begins once reaching the lake, in
the heart of Ijen. Foggy and horribly dense steam comes out of the
slopes, through the pipes placed along, wherein the sulfur emerges at the surface, dripping out and percolating out soon to be collected by those
hardworking men. They
are surrounded with this itchy and acrid steam, which one suffocates
with whenever the cloud comes by, and they seemingly
bravely get through this
toil without reproaches
and complaints... Yeah, people shouldn't
work this way. Very touching and giving
a lot to think through once again.
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| a hard way up, for some, a tougher way down... |
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| almost there... |
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| wow! |
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| loads of sulfur |
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| A joker stoker. A supervisor or what? |
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| puffing and steaming relentlessly... |
People shouldn't work like this....
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| tough to watch, how tough it must be to withstand this?? |
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we made it for the sunset!
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Did you
hear about erupting volcanoes here in Java, lately? Well, we were just
next by, it happened;) (nothing to be worried about, just fumes and ash – very
'silty' ones,
and annoying as well, cause settles everywhere..).
Here
it is, on the background of Ijen (the other side, on the way down):
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| really weird feeling to have it 'at hand' |
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