Chris Grieve

After over a week in Ubud (Bali), Jodie and I made our way down south to a coastal town in Bali called 'Canggu' to meet Ali who is moving to that area to be a digital nomad and travel around for around a year.

This was a slight diversion from our original plans of going to East Java (an island west of Bali) as our night bus was delayed 8 hours so we decided not to get on it.

We spent a couple of days exploring Canggu (lots of beaches, bars and good food! although lot of westerners there as well) and then made our way to Lombok which is an island to the east of Bali. It is the island that the rave across the world series is going to finish on! After a day on Lombok, we signed up to climb Mt Rinjani through our hostel which is an active volcano in the centre of Lombok island. It is the second highest peak in Indonesia, at ~3700m. Higher than all of the 'three peaks' in UK combined.

We opted for the two day option which meant hiking up to camp on day 1 which took about 6 hours with breaks and then hiking to the summit (about 3 hours from camp) and then all the way down to the bottom (another ~8 hours total) in day 2. Day 1 was difficult but the day 2 summit climb was easily the hardest part. After a 'sleep' (none of us slept at all, ground was way too hard) in a tent at camp we got up at 1.30am to start hiking to the summit in the dark. The last section was very steep and the ground you are hiking on is a mixture of sand and volcanic ash, which means you sink in about 15cm with every step and constantly slide backwards at the really steep parts. Was a lot of pushing through pain but we all managed to summit in time for the sunrise which meant some amazing views, some of the best I've seen. Well worth the tough hike in my eyes. We stayed at the summit for about an hour as it was freezing cold and then started the long hike to the bottom. The way down meant basically sliding/skiing down the ash a lot of the way, we all had some falls and sore knees. My shoes also took a beating and I had to drain them of volcanic ash and stones.

We hiked with a group of about 15 people although the organisation of the tour wasn't great so we were without a guide for most of it and hiking alone in smaller sub groups depending on speed. There were also other groups climbing at the same time and loads of indonesian porters and guides climbing as well. The porters hiked all the way up to base camp (not summit) in flip flops whilst balancing a super heavy stick on their shoulder which had everyone's water, tents, sleeping bags etc. attached to each end. They were also somehow faster than most of us hiking, really don't know how they keep upright at the steep gravelly sections. You can kind of see them in one of the pics I uploaded if you zoom in (pic in the grassy section with all the people).

A lot of people didn't make it to summit, either turned back to camp or didn't attempt it at all.

We finished the hike a couple of days ago and have been recovering and relaxing since then. Ali went back to Canggu, Jodie and I have stayed on Lombok and were currently staying in a fancy hotel (for £23 a night) to treat ourselves.

I think we still want to go to East Java and do some volcano hikes there, although we need a bit of a break from hiking first! Also don't think we're going to do both Bromo and Ijen (volcanos in Java) as originally planned. Maybe just Bromo. Ijen had an accident the other day with a tourist so think we will skip it as part of it has been closed.

We also want to do Komod islands so trying to work out a cheap way to get there.Read more