This week I finally stopped putting off the challenge of conquering Mount Batukaru. The peak, which stands at a modest 2200 metres above sea level is the second highest in Bali. Each day that I have lived here it has loomed above me as if taunting me for further delaying my climb. With my departure for Europe rapidly approaching, I could take no more and succumbed to the necessity of the ascent, which exists simply because one can.
The reason that I hadn’t made the trek until now was not entirely down to tardiness. For starters, it is not often that I get a full day off from the various bits of work that I do up here. Secondly, we are still in the rainy season. This not only makes the climb rather unpleasant, but as I soon realised, it makes it quite dangerous too. Guests are not permitted to do the trek if it has rained in the two days prior to the planned date. I later found that this would have been the case on the day I climbed, but the decision was made to let me go anyway. I am obviously not as important as paying guests; Or visibly fitter. We’ll trust that it is the latter.
Mount Batukaru at 6:30am
So on Tuesday morning at seven in the morning, with a backpack full of rice and chicken I met my friend Kadek, who was to act as my guide for the day. Kadek is eighteen years old and works in the garden at Bali Eco Stay. Last year he trained to lead trips up the mountain for guests, but as I found out close to the summit, he has only climbed it three times including that training session. Despite the fact that Kadek was a little green, his enthusiasm and knowledge ensured that my trip was fantastic.
I was rather concerned to learn from Kadek that there would be nowhere to fill my water bottle on the mountain as we would be bypassing all of the rivers. This meant that the modest 650ml that I was carrying was to see me through a gruelling four hour climb and two hour descent. As I was not willing to resort to drinking my own urine just yet, I was on liquid rations for the day.
The departure point is at Jati Luih temple, where we were greeted by our welcoming party in the form of a monkey. He was extremely friendly indeed, approaching us without fear and wishing to share everything that we had brought along. He made a cavalier grab for my shoelaces at one point and spent a lot of time eyeing up my iPod. Eventually he got away with the offering that Kadek had made at the temple. The Balinese are extremely devout followers of their own brand of Hinduism, so throughout the ascent, Kadek was inclined to stop and make offerings to the various gods at their temples. I cannot begin to imagine the horrors that we were being protected from.
Monkey on the rob
From the first temple, we entered the rainforest with Kadek reeling off the names of all the animals that lived there but that we would not see. They included deer, snakes, eagles, hogs, monkeys and some kind of big cat. As it turned out, we did spy another monkey of a different species to our thief and I was extremely surprised to hear Kadek tell me that he’d never seen one before. I was to hear this a few times over the course of the hike in relation to various pieces of plant life, prompting me to ask him whether he’d ever been there before. It was as a result of this conversation that I learned that he was a relative novice.
Spiky jungle plants
The climb through the rainforest was tough. At 2200 metres, I will admit that I had not expected to have any trouble reaching the summit. However, it is not the height that makes Batukaru a challenge but the terrain. There is no path to speak of. Instead Kadek had to lead the way with a knife, cutting his way through dense rainforest while climbing relentlessly. On any mountain that I have climbed before, there have been well trodden paths that as well as rising towards the peak, weave their way across flat ridges and valleys, giving some respite for the thighs. On Batukaru this is not the case. It is a direct march up hill over whatever obstacle may be in the way, through tangles of roots, mud, rock and heavy ferns.
Tunnelling under the ferns
Whenever I encroach on a new community in foreign land, I do enjoy giving something back. So it was that I gave the leeches of the rainforest a good feeding. Somehow they managed to find their way to my feet, leaving my socks with a polka dot pattern that looked like Minnie mouse’s bow. Along with a few scratches and scrapes from vicious plants, these represented the only injuries I sustained on the climb.
I was pleased to be shown all of the sights on the way up, particularly the spot where a local gentleman had slipped and fallen to his death a year earlier. Most unnervingly, this was around ten minutes before we arrived at the ‘hard section’. This came as we emerged from the rainforest into a dense jungle of ferns that cover the top part of the mountain. In order to traverse them, you must cut through them, walk over them and crawl under them as you wind your way up to the peak. At times there are sheer drops around which one must skirt, all the while climbing further. One slip and a plummet down into the forest is the reward.
Kadek hacks a path with his knife
But four hours after departure, Kadek and I emerged victorious at the summit, where he went about his religious duties and I tucked hungrily into my packed lunch. Disappointingly, we spent the break shrouded in dense cloud and so the spectacular views that I had been promised were rather concealed. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the rewards of a good feed and the promise of a rather more rapid bound down the mountain, which we completed in about half the time. Gravity can be so very helpful at times.
Rooted
The Badgerwolf 