The Road to the Lake of Farts

Frankly, on arrival in Bali I feel like kissing the ground, Pope-style.

Or, as Z puts it, “Civilisation! We’re back in civilization.”

We have a lovely few days. Catch up with friends. Go to Waterbom.

Develop a disturbing addiction to stuffed chilli peppers at what purports to be a Greek restaurant.

Shop for a new smart outfit for Z – black jeans and a black T-shirt, a uniform, which, I figure, could see him all the way through to 40 if he so fancied.

And discover the pleasures of Balian and the wonders of Time Crisis 4.

I’m feeling pretty good about our bike, by now, the effortless way you can change direction with the tiniest shift of bodyweight.

I’ve enjoyed cutting through the queues of bigger vehicles that clog the roads up to the port, just one of a swarm of scooters…

And on the ferry to Java, heading for the volcanoes, coffee plantations and sulphur lake of the Ijen plateau, we are full of the joys of spring.

Especially Z, the proud possessor of a new pair of super-mean shades…

I am, however, a little anxious about the road up to the Ijen volcano lake. Largely since Lonely Planet Indonesia recommends one attempts it on a motorbike.

“So,” I say, to a local chap on the ferry. “This road, then, from Banyuwangi to Ijen. You can do it on a motorbike, right?”

“Ya, ya,” he says. “It’s broken. But you can do it on a bike.”

He casts a wary eye over our bags, which I choose to ignore.

“Can you do it in a car?” I ask.

“Ya, ya,” he says.

Then he adds something about a “ranger”.

Does he mean a national park “ranger”? I wonder. Or a four wheel drive “ranger”?

It’s an important distinction, with which my Indonesian, though past the pidgin stage, cannot cope.

Still, as we cruise from the port through Banyuwangi and up the narrow, winding road into the hills, I’m loving our bike.

“Christ,” says Z, a few k into our ascent to the Ijen Plateau – we have good chats on our motorbike, especially when we’re going as slowly as we are now. “WELCOME TO JAVA!”

It’s not an appealing vista.

I mean, the landscape is stunning. But the road is now steep, loose scree alternating with spiky, chunky rocks, most coated finely with a particularly slippery mud.

It’s the sort of thing that’s actively fun in a 4WD. And would, actually, be quite fun on a trail bike.

Y’know. You work out the piece of road the vehicle will go up. Then you go up it. Sort of like a chess game.

On our little automatic?

Not so much fun. Largely because I am not entirely convinced that the bike will go up this thing.

“Don’t write off Java just yet,” I say, optimistically.

“Wow!” says Z, who’s got off to walk for the n-th time, in a tone of amused, scientific detachment. “Your back wheel is machine-gunning rocks at me!”

“Well, MOVE!” I say. “Get out of the way!!!”

The bike is not enjoying our progress. Nor, to be honest, am I.

There’s a lot of slewing. A lot of revving. A lot of machine-gunning. A lot of attempting to get up onto a rock, getting stuck on it, sliding/walking the bike cautiously back and attempting another approach…

If I were a character in a Victorian novel, I might be enervated by now.

“This is seriously the worst road ever,” says Z.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think it’s worse than that four wheel drive track in Arkaroola.”

We’re juddering painfully slowly up some rocks, alternating nervously between max power and no power, when the bike refuses to go further.

No worries, think I, applying the brakes, and preparing to slither backwards to plot a new ascent. I put my feet down, as you do.

Which is when I realise, in extremely slow motion, that, due to certain vagaries of terrain I should probably have noticed, the ground is now a LONG way below my left foot.

The bike leans, in EXTREMELY slow motion, to the left, pulling my right foot, very slowly, off the ground.

I throw my weight to the right, regain contact with the earth for a few precious nanoseconds, but bike, bag, and Z are now headed relentlessly left.

My mouth opens to shout a warning but I cannot think of what to say.

By the time my left foot is down and stable, the bike’s at a 45 degree angle.

As I lack the ability to crack walnuts between my thighs, I am incapable of beating gravity in this instance.

Z flies, in extremely slow motion, off the back of the bike and into the grass, where he lies, emitting raspberries of suppressed laughter, a couple of feet from our bags.

I let the bike down gently.

“Mum!” Z says. “You are a total spastic.”

I right the bike, and endeavour to push it up over the rocks.

I fail.

A local chap comes bouncing, very slowly, down the slope. He gets off his bike and parks it to render assistance – our circumstances are, I think, not uncommon in these parts.

His bike falls over, VERY slowly.

I attempt to leave our bike to help him with his, but the road’s too rocky for me to balance it on the kickstand.

Our saviour picks his bike up, rebalances it.

“Is it alright?” I ask.

“Ya, ya!” he says. “No problem!”

He takes our bike and shoves it the required 20 metres over the rocks, while I trail behind with the bags and a sniggering spawn.

“Thanks!” I say, and away he bounces.

As Z is walking and I am slewing/skidding/braking my way up and down some particularly undulating scree, which must once upon a time have been a series of extremely deep potholes, I pull over to let a tourist van, the only four-wheeled vehicle we have seen so far, past.

“Go back!” yells the driver. “The road’s broken.”

I know the road is f*cking broken.

I can SEE that.

I’ve been UP the bl**dy thing for god’s sake.

That is also precisely why I don’t particularly fancy our chances of going back DOWN it in one piece.

Plus, we’ve met the odd local going down it, albeit VERY slowly, on bikes, albeit BIGGER bikes than ours, and they’ve all told us it’s doable on a bike.

I am quixotically determined that I WILL get us up this sodding road. We’ve done almost 5000k on this bike, more of it than I would like on extremely bad roads, and as our Indonesian motorbike odyssey nears its end, I WILL NOT be beaten by a few rocks and some scree.

I mean, how much worse can it get?

“Why can I smell diesel?” asks Z, a little later.

“Because the engine’s over-heating,” I say.

Now, I’m not the most mechanically ept of people, but, after our disaster in Flores, I know that our bike is atypically thirsty when it comes to oil. So I got our oil checked before we left Bali.

(Rather pathetically, I am physically incapable of opening the dipstick myself. Mechanics always open and close it with pliers, but every Indonesian man I’ve met seems to be able to open it, no problem.)

“Let’s check the coolant,” says Z.

We check it. It looks fine.

“I think we just need to rest it for a few minutes,” I say, optimistically. “Give the engine a chance to cool down after all the revving.”

Bike cooled, we re-embark.

We’ve been told we only have 8k more of bad road before it improves, and even at our current glacial speed I’m confident we’ll make the base of the volcano before nightfall.

Some way up, a chap pulls his bike over in front of ours.

I park, assuming he’s blocking me because he has something of importance to impart.

“Hello,” I say, in true British fashion.

“Piss,” he says, in Indonesian, gesturing at his crotch.

Nothing to see here, I figure. Move along.

We move along. Rather slowly.

He pulls over again. I stop.

“You know what you need?” he asks in Indonesian. “You need my bike, and an ojek, someone like me. To take the kid and the bags. Because your bike will not manage this road.”

“No thank you,” I say in Indonesian. “We’re fine.”

Because, sure, we’re doing just bloody dandy.

As we machine-gun, slew and skid our way up the road, he cruises behind us on his better-powered manual bike like a two-wheeled vulture.

Ignore, I think. Ignore.

Ahead of us, I see tarmac. Quite a substantial length of tarmac, which covers quite a bit of the width of the road.

O mirabile visu!

It is, however, an, umm, interesting gradient. Definitely worse than one in two.

I max the accelerator.

The bike screams and groans.

It does not, however, move.

I switch off the engine, put the kickstand down and light a cigarette. Our vulture pulls over.

“Ya,” I say, defensively. “Just a little bit hot, ya? The engine’s a little bit hot, ya?”

Z and I inspect the coolant levels. He hangs there, silent, vulturesque.

I put some more coolant in, just for the hell of it. It runs down the slope.

I panic.

“Not a problem,” says the vulture helpfully. “There’s no problem with the engine.”

Z, I and our vulture-saviour wait.

I start the bike.

I accelerate.

I haul as hard as I can on the accelerator.

The bike doesn’t move.

It’s not going up this slope. At least, not with me, Z and the bags.

I’m also pretty sure it’s wellied through our remaining oil.

“Ya,” I say to our vulture, as if picking up the conversation he began half an hour before. “So how much to get us to the mountain refuge? You can take the kid and the bags, right?”

“Ya,” he says. “Your bike will be OK with just you.”

“OK,” I say. “How much?”

“50,000,” he says. (That’s just over $5.)

“That’s fine,” I say. He’s a nice guy, with the patience of, well, either a saint or a vulture, plus I’m not really in a negotiating position. “Z – you’re going to go with this guy, while I take our bike up.”

We load up his bike. I start mine. It goes like a charm. When I get stuck on a couple of rocky patches, our saviour hops off and gives me a shove.

We cover what remains of our journey in no time flat.

The pink and green clapboard huts of the mountain refuge cluster at the base of the Ijen volcano, silhouetted like an old man’s broken gums against the fading sky, the setting sun gilding the landscape.

It’s stunning.

Golden savannah grasses wave in the wind; tall conifers tremble; the road, now pristine tarmac, stretches into the long grass like something out of a road movie.

It’s chilly, up here. Must be well below 20 degrees. And, after more than 18 months in Australasia, that feels cold.

I pay our vulture-saviour and thank him profusely.

We get a room, plus extra blankets, head over to one of their simple warungs, and sit on logs beside their cooking fire.

The family fuss over Z, and, as we eat their food and the sun fades to black, we chat about our plans for tomorrow: to climb Mount Ijen, enjoy the dazzling views, and, of course, inspect the sulphur lake we childishly call the Lake of Farts…