May 15, 2015
Climbing a volcano: Without Tom
Before going to sleep I read about the volcano that I wanted to climb, Mount Sibayak, and I realised that it was a longer hike than I had first thought. I was also concerned that, as happened on the peaks every day, clouds would move in during the afternoon and obscure the views from the summit. With Berastagi, the town at the foot of the climb, still fifty kilometres away I decided that the only way I was going to make it on time to reach the top before too late in the day would be for Tom and I to cycle separately. Our styles were too different and I always ended up spending time waiting for him to smoke a cigarette or drink a coffee or retie his tyre back together. I had already broached the subject with him the previous day and he had seemed okay with it, so I got up at first light and quickly packed up my things.
Tom also got up and began to pack up his tent as well, which, due to the small area of available camping space in the field, had been placed only a couple of metres from mine. I told him that I wanted to go on alone. He wasn’t having any of it.
“Chris, can’t you just wait two minutes?!” he said as he rushed to get ready.
“It won’t be two minutes Tom, it’ll be twenty minutes, and then I’ll have to wait for you again, I know I will, it happens every day.”
I was annoyed with him because he made me feel guilty for wanting to go without him and so I sat and waited even though I was ready to go. He seemed to think I was being inconsiderate, although why he thought I should show any consideration for him after he had just spent the whole night periodically farting very loudly two metres from my head wasn’t made clear.
We made it back to the road together and I started cycling ahead fast to show that I was serious about wanting to not waste time today. I got my head down and started to cycle quick, but 1500 metres later I realised that Tom was nowhere to be seen behind me. I stopped and waited for a few minutes, but there was still no sign. So I backtracked to look for him, and eventually found him back at the edge of the field rearranging his bags and strapping them on with cable ties. All his panniers had broken off all at once. I stood patiently waiting for a minute.
“Tom. I really would appreciate it if you let me just cycle on at my own pace today.” I said.
“Sure man, just go.”
I had lost half an hour but now that I had permission to go, well, I went. I cycled hard, determined, focused on my goal, riding as fast as I could toward the impressive sight of the erupting volcano Mount Sinabung, through the town of Kabanjahe, and on to Berastagi. I was checked into a guesthouse and beginning the hike by ten in the morning.
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The hike followed a semi-paved road for most of the way up, which meant that I actually could have cycled on further. But the skies were clear and it looked like I had given myself plenty of time now and it was nice to be off the bike for once, walking up the mountain under lush forest canopies.
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There were quite a few other people hiking up, most of them groups of Indonesian teenagers, perhaps on some sort of collective school trip. It was one of these groups that I mistakenly followed when we reached what looked like the point that we had to leave the road and take the trail to the summit. They disappeared into the jungle, me trotting along behind. Then they all laughed, turned around, came back towards me. They clearly had no idea where they were going.
Eventually the right trail was found and I let the group go on ahead as I was enjoying the reverie that came with hiking with my own thoughts, but unfortunately an English couple came along and I got talking with them, which was much worse. There was something about meeting people that had just flown in from London that took away from the experience of having made it here with my own legs. So when we caught up to the group of teenagers again I let the English couple go on ahead and fell back in with the Indonesian girls and their cries of “Photo? Photo?”
But I left them and I was alone again as I neared the top and saw for the first time the thermal vents that were spitting out continuous trails of steam from the rocks. The smell of sulphur permeated the air and around the vents the rock had turned a fluorescent yellow, a colour every bit as luminescent as a high-visibility vest, as if mother nature wanted to prove she could create any colour you can name. There were certainly a few different colours on the rocks opposite, which were lit up with streaks of red and orange, yellow, grey, green.
It was possible to climb still further, past a pool of water, a sort of crater lake that was the colour of silty mouthwash, and up towards peaks that surrounded it, the crater’s edges. I made my way up the rocky trail to the lip of the crater rim and summited, preparing myself for the stunning views of the landscape around me. I took the final step onto the top and was instead greeted with the familiar cry of “Mister, mister, photo, photo?”
Once the photoshoot was done I was able to look around and appreciate the extraordinary scenery. It was possible to see a very long way indeed across the Sumatran landscape. Mount Sinabung, the erupting volcano, was the dominant feature, and it was a truly spectacular sight. With the pool of water, the sulphur vents, the coloured rocks and the erupting volcano in the background it was undoubtedly one incredible place to be. Worth all the effort.
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It was such a special place that I spent two hours at the top, climbing up to various parts of the crater and just sitting and appreciating the view, and of course participating in numerous photo-shoots. Then just as I was about to start heading back who should arrive on the scene, but Mr Tom himself. As usual he was harbouring no animosity and in fact was in good spirits, having apparently drunk quite a lot of coffee, and he had made it in time as there were still no clouds. He wasn’t worried about spending as much time at the top as me though, so after he’d seen everything we hiked back down together.
On his way through Berastagi Tom had seen a bike shop and once we got back there he took his bike, which now had numerous pieces of plastic around the tyre flapping noisily as he cycled, there to look for a replacement. In the morning we would commence a massive descent back down to sea level, and it certainly wasn’t going to be a good idea to do such a long, steep descent on a dangerously deteriorating tyre. Unfortunately he returned unsuccessful. Once again they didn’t have the right size of tyre, but Tom had found an alternative solution.
“They said I should sew a piece of rubber from an inner tube onto the tyre,” he explained, “so I went to the tailor but they wouldn’t do. So I went to another tailor, but they wouldn’t do it. So I just bought some needle and thread and did it myself.”
Mr Tom was about to do a 1500 metre mountain descent on a tyre that he’d just hand-sewn back together with a makeshift rubber splint. And I’d forgotten to tell him to buy a helmet.
Today's ride: 52 km (32 miles)
Total: 40,725 km (25,290 miles)
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