The Merapi volcano is one of the most active in Indonesia which erupt ranging from 1 - 4 years.
Most people decide for a night hike to avoid heat during the day and enjoy mesmerising sunrise from the top that you can even see other mountain such as Mount Sindoro, Sumbing, Lawu and Merbabu.
The Hiking
To reach the basecamp of Merapi mountain, you could choose Yogyakarta city or Surakarta city as a meeting point. The closest way is from Surakarta city, but often foreigners start from Yogyakarta.
Our group trip of Mt Merapi
But on this article, we want to share you a bit of our story when accompany 8 foreign students from Sebelas Maret University and ISBI Surakarta. We picked them up from Surakarta city by van on 9 pm. It took not more than 2 hours to arrive at the basecamp (New Selo).
Please have to be noted, even though Mt Merapi has an altitude of 2900 meters above sea level. You should ensure that you have a good health condition and enough excercise. If you are not use a private trip package, you can take several buses from Surakarta/Yogyakarta city to get New Selo. And in case you want to sleep in New Selo, there are many local homestays.
After arriving at New Selo, first thing that we need to do was finish the registration process. But it took quite long time because we came on weekend. Waiting for about 45 minutes enough to make our bones frozen. The students just do chit chat to avoid the cool weather.
The route when you climb up Mt Merapi
Before we reach our first stop, we would pass some agricultural terraces and then enter the forest. Please make sure, you use the proper shoes and don't use a typically tropical sandal.
One of our members at that time, a girl from Japan, should be waiting on the shelter after passing the agricultural terraces because she seemed not in a good condition. No enough energy to step up and even no energy to get up. Just laying down. On such kind of this circumstances, we recommend you to keep stay and don't continue to hiking. Your condition is more important than the sunrise view.
When 2 mountain guides took a pose at Pasar Bubrah
After around 3 hours of hiking, you would arrive on the Pasar Bubrah plateau whereas we could see clearly the summit of volcano and several tents.
The Summit
The last 200 meters which contains so much volcanic rocks
The hardest part of this hiking is the summit. The last 200 meters of altitude contain volcanic rocks, sand and ash would make your step slippery. More you step up, more you slip down as well. Now, you just need to motivate yourself to reach the peak.
The total duration to go up took about 4 hours for foreigners, but normally for Indonesian it take 6 hours and even more. Whilst for the way down was around 3 hours and even shorter for foreigners (again).
This one day trip with skipping entire night to sleep is actually challenging and memorable. But we guarantee that the sunrise and the views are really breathtaking. No worth to be skipped if you are in Yogyakarta/ Surakarta city.
Thank you for reading this story until the end and don't forget to find out your travel buddy here.
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