The reason for writing this article is that we were really pissed off by the local approach to the visitors. It started already in the hotel where the hotel manager suggested about 10x to take a guide otherwise we risk getting lost. He also described to us in detail how dangerous was the dense jungle and steep clumb and named couple of examples of people getting lost on their track… Then our driver also insisted that we MUST hire a guide… However, we were determined to climb without a guide, taking AL THE RISKS! (we did not want to do the track at night to see the sunrise from the top, we just wanted to start the track with the sunrise) and following the one and only way to the top as the Google showed. We even made up a little story to have something to tell to the actual guides when they started to harrass us.
Start
So at 6am we arrived to Pura Pasar Agung parking and right after that about 5 local guides appeared and started pushing us to hire them. Also our driver told us again that this route is dangerous, and that there is a lot of ways we could go and get lost. Bit – THIS IS NOT TRUE! There is only one clear way from the bottom to the top, no chance to get lost.
After they saw that we are really decided to go alone, they just started talking about some donation they want for some associacion of theirs. Ok, it was like 100.000 IDR, so no problem with this, but I guess they bought cigarettes for this… Whatever!!
There is only one problematic passage and that’s when you walk up the stairs to the temple. We asked the local here what is the right way and as he saw we didn’ t have a guid he just laughed and turned away (and this was the main reason we wanted to write this article). So when you walk up the stairs and you are in front of the temple just go to the left corner, there is a small door. Then continue straight to the next corner and turn right just behind the external wall of the temple. You have to cross a place that looks like a construction site, but immediately after that you’ll see a narrow windong path through the jungle. There is also alternative start as on the map. The funny is that even from sattelite the route is well visible:
The route is from 3/4 forrest, the rest is rocky and can be quite steep. I think no chance to get off the way. On the rocky part follow the grafitti on the rocks and the garbage all along the path.
You can go straight to the top (3031m) or to the volcano (2847m) – you can see how the way is split on the map.
The way will take you around 4hours up and around 3,5 hours down. It can be faster, but we made stops quite often to take pictures or to rest, so our final time was like 9 hours…
And pictures of the start
GPS to download:
I have found couple of GPS coordinates on internet. Also I found 3 ways to the top – from Besakih, from Pura Pasar and “un-official” way from the east. Here are the kml files. If you are familiar with My Google Maps, you can import this layers to your map and use it during the way on your smartphone. Also the locals told us there is no signal, no internet connection on the way up. That is also not true – there is the signal on 80% of the track!
Enjoy the climb!