Chasing Waterfalls at Tempu Sewak

After recovering from the sunrise tour I rented a bike for a day to head out exploring Java's best known waterfalls, Tempu Sewak. It was a two hour journey so by the end of it my arse was pretty numb and I was itching to explore.

The waterfalls did not disappoint! There was no one major standout waterfall but rather a collection of streams that cascaded down over cliff edges into the gorge at the bottom of the valley. The river at the bottom wasn't too engulfed but I could imagine it being a force to contend with in the middle of wet season after a downpour.

There weren't many signs at the bottom so I was free to criss-cross between little waterfalls and streams and eventually found some water pools to hike up to through mini waterfalls. I went down one way and managed to come back up a different way so I think I got to see most of what Tempu Sewak had to offer!

Afterwards I had some time to spare so lazily rode through some of the rural backroads. One bemused guy with his family on his bike pulled me over concerned that I had taken the wrong turn for the "correct" waterfall which was endearing as the Indonesian people are so nice and friendly. It was refreshing to explore the rural countryside and have a slight glimpse of what rural living in Indonesia is like given I'd only seen city living up to now.

My arse couldn't take the whole two hour journey back home so I took a pitstop to watch the sunset over a corn field. The sunsets in Indonesia really are something with the whole sky illuminated in magnificent magenta colours. The idyllic scene was bliss bar the calls to prayer from the neighbouring mosques. As Java is predominantly Muslim, there are numerous mosque calls and so numerous men squawking down bad microphones in a cacophony of sound. But somewhere underneath I could still hear one or two bird songs.Read more