I am sure every single fan of volcanoes will be super familiar with mount Bromo. Why? Simply because you are a fan so you gotta need to know about it. If you didn’t know yet, no worries, I’ll tell you everything about Bromo including my experience hiking Bromo without paying any main entrance fee. Do you think it’s unfair? Well, lemme tell you something, nobody owns Bromo, right? Do you agree with this? Perfect!. If nobody owns it. So why do we should pay? No need to answer. Just think about it. It’s nature and it’s for all human beings.
In my logic, some volcanoes and/or any mountain in Indonesia might charge you for the entrance fee based on some condition such as for the maintenance, or even for the guide, or even for insurance, some of the volcanoes will ask you to pay extra if you wanted to put your tent on top. I’ll agree with the maintenance reason simply because based on my observation so far, some irresponsible climbers left a bunch of trash on the summit. So the money that climbers pay in the main entrance will be used to pay the service of cleaning the trash.
Second, the money of registration also will be used as your insurance. Just in case something happened to you on the top, so the security guard will rescue you. This reason is still logical since we have no idea what if the extreme weather is dangerous for the climbers? Based on two reasons earlier, I am willing to pay because the use of money is pretty clear and the amount is not even reaching 100k rupiahs.
But then, how about the guide? Some volcanoes require you to have a guide to climb. This point I do not agree. Why? This point is the reason why the price of the main entrance went crazy like triple. I mean seriously? I do realize that the guides need the income but then, come on! we are climbers, we are NOT RICH. It’s just crazy when you asked me to pay like 350k only for climbing a volcano? You must be joking me. Plus, some volcanoes make the different price between locals and foreigners. The reason drove me pretty nut which is like an incentive because the foreigners are the tourists so they gotta help to improve the economic growth through tourism fees. What? Seriously, this is insane. I don’t know what to say. Just because their currencies are higher than rupiah, but then, I don’t see the point why the heck should be a different price?
Let’s get back to the guide thingy. I don’t mean to be an arrogant climbing volcano without a guide. But then, as long as you have maps and try to be responsible for surrounding with all good intentions, I think climbing with friend is just enough. Lastly, why should I pay a lot to enjoy nature? As I told earlier, nature is an open space. It’s just insane like some main entrances, ask you to pay crazy price just to put your tent on the top. I mean, why tho???
I know, I am very critical. But then, I have my own reason. It just doesn’t make any sense to pay crazy prices just because the Volcano is famous. So, since this section is all about climbing Bromo in a different way, I’ll try my best to share my unique experience reaching Bromo without spending any penny. How? Hold on, before that, let’s talk a little bit about Mount Bromo. Here you go.
Mount Bromo is an active volcano located in East Java. This volcano is one of the popular peaks in Indonesia even though only 2,329 meters in height. The name of Bromo derives from the Javanese pronunciation of Brahma, the Hindu creator god. Mount Bromo is part of the Tengger massif, together with Semeru, Batok, and Widodaren. It belongs to the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park which is located in a plain called the Sea of Sand. It is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Indonesia, because of the sunrise view on Mount Bromo and to see its crater through a Bromo tour with Jeep since the track is quite steep and super sandy. But then I chose to climb Bromo by my ownself without the tour, nor even Jeep or even a motorbike. How? Be patient. I will tell you soon.
I went to Bromo right after I finished climbing Mount Lawu on the border of Central Java and East Java. See the journey here: http://windaedelwis.com/2019/11/15/you-dont-know-mount-lawu-shame-on-you-p/.
Right after I finished my journey in Mount Lawu, I headed to Stasiun Solo Jebres by hitchhiking to catch the train to Malang (I paid 109k rupiahs) until Tumpang. From Tumpang, I went all way to Bromo by hitchhiking so then I passed the main entrance with a local driver who brought vegetables so the main entrance of Bromo didn’t ask me for money. Thanks to the power of hitchhiking.
At one point, the driver dropped me and my friend. Because he went to the different direction while we needed to go down. Once I went down by walking because we already saw the mountain, some guys asked for our tickets. I didn’t care even though they tried to rip us off, we kept walking because we used Maps.me which was super cool showing us the hidden path that normal maps cannot do. So we went down all the way to the street until we found the National Park. We kept walking until we passed the huge dessert field. Which was super sandy. It was really fun tho, as I carried my super big and heavy bag while kept walking miles. Somehow I felt really proud of myself.
Once we were not too far from the volcano, we just stopped to set the tent since it was almost dark as we planned to climb the peak the next morning.
We found a good spot to spend the night and get ready for the campfire cuz we knew it’s going to be cold during the night. So yeah, once the tent was set, we collected some dry woods or branches as well as dried leaves to set the fire.
Spent the night close to the crater was super challenging. The cold and strong wind tested me. But then, the stars were super amazing as I could see the sky was super clear. The most important thing is I survived the night! I was super lucky that no rain at all! What an amazing experience. The next day, we packed our stuff and started to climb the peak. Since we started earlier, It wasn’t super warm. But then on the way up, it was kinda hard since we took the hidden path far away from the entrance. But then I made it to the top. I saw a crater! The smoke and the smell quite strong. I walked around the crater. It was really amazing view. Man! You have no idea how happy I was. It was such a blast journey! You should try on!
