It is about the journey and not the destination. The old
travel maxim has never been truer for me.
Mount Gunug
Agung is Bali’s highest and most sacred point. The keen climb the volcano
in the night to catch the sun rise across the whole island. Stuart, Jesse – the World Nomads
producer and I were the keen, so we got up at 1am to be taken to the foot of the
volcano.
Our guide Nyouman made offerings at the temple before we
climbed the 300 stairs to where the trail starts. The trail up the volcano is the path from a
lava stream when the volcano erupted in 1963. Imagine a
volcano erupting, the lava spews straight down the mountain, right? That meant
we were headed straight up the mountain. No cross back trails, no gentle
incline. Straight up, it was straight up.
In the dark, in the rain, in the middle of the night using
my hands to pull me up the trail, I wondered how this experience was a prize.
Thank you World Nomads, thank you. As it
got darker, wetter, and steeper, I sent more little telepathic thank- you
messages to World Nomads.
Stuart asked Jesse, is this gruelling or arduous? He replied
both, and it was. It was really hard. We had to stop for breaks after 15 minutes,
and from then on about every 10 minutes. Yuman our guide barely breathed and
basically floated up the mountain. Lactic acid stung my legs and I am sure my
puffing scared away any wildlife in earshot.
My warning bells went off when we past a couple of pretty
fit looking Germans heading back down, too hard for them they said, good luck. They had proper walking
sticks and cargo pants and all the right gear, and yet they couldn’t do it?!
After two hours we reached halfway, finally above the
treeline and the clouds. The stars came out and stretched from left to right
and underfoot the ground had changed to loose volcanic rock. It was pretty
magic. Not a sound and not a sight besides the stars. I was on top of a volcano
and if my legs hadn’t been so sore, I could have stretched and touched the
stars.
It had been getting harder for the last half hour and I had
noticed Jesse’s breathing begin to change. He wasn’t just puffing like Stuart
and I, he was really struggling to regain breath. He needed to stop, and wanted to go back down.
We made the decision to all head back together.
Having gone straight up the volcano, meant going down, was
going straight down. My approach to this
was to get on my bum as much as possible.
Dawn revealed that we were in fact in a pretty lush jungle up a volcano.
As disappointing as it was to not make it up, I was pretty
glad to get in the car and off the volcano. So we didn’t make it, so what. The
volcano definitely isn’t going anywhere, and I while I will be leaving Bali in
a few days, who is to say I will never be back.
I often feel like this travelling when I hear people talk
about places they can’t miss, rushing around “doing” a country or city as if
the place is about to disappear. Slow down, enjoy the journey.
