People climb Mt Agung for a multitude of reasons. Mostly because it is there. It is a very imposing and large 3142 metre high volcano in the northeast of Bali that means everything to the Balinese people and to climb it is an act or extreme reverence.
My very good friend and I had been dithering around for three years staring at Mt Agung, when the weather would allow, with good intentions of getting to the top some day. With her looming relocation to England we made a decision to climb to the top so we could finally stop talking about it and possibly get some lasting memories out of the adventure. Having climbed a large volcano before I knew what the repercussions would be; sore limbs, bad back, blisters, breathlessness and a constant feeling on the way up of “will this never end?” With this in mind I had made sure that there would be a five-star reward waiting for us at the end of the climb.
At around 1.30am the guide knocked on the door of our budget hotel two thirds of the way up the mountain. We got up, dressed and headed out the door. We had only been asleep for about two hours and wouldn’t be looking at a bed for another 12. We dressed warm for it is cold at over 2000m where we slept and there was another 1000 or so metres to climb before we reached the top. We set off in the blackness carrying water and warm clothes while our guide carried a huge pack on his back full of bananas and cake, noodles and hot water, which we were later to appreciate more than you know.
The headlamps we were wearing only illuminated a very small space in front of our feet making any kind of idea of progress impossible to determine. Only once we cleared the tree line after an hour or so could we make any sort of approximation of distance as we looked back down over the lights of southern Bali’s roads and villages. There was a black moon so the stars were out in abundance and we could see the peak’s dark silhouette framed against the slightly less black sky. Despite the beauty of this night sky, each step I made was driven by thoughts of pain and suffering, but the feeling of rapture at reaching the top was going to be worth every step.
Ten minutes before sunrise we summited Agung and all of Bali and Lombok, across to the west of Sumbawa and the East of Java unfolded before our eyes. It was a magical sight made all the more spectacular by the effort it had taken to get there. The aforementioned hot noodles and fruit cake were a godsend. Forty five minutes later we began the descent, laughing, chattering and clambering over the rocks on an adrenaline high. After three years of talk we had finally ‘knocked the bugger off’.
The trip down was made all the more easy by the knowledge that we were now headed for a two-day recuperation at Amankila, that most luxurious of five-star resorts perched on a hillside in Manggis, East Bali, that stares out over the beautiful, blue tropical waters of the Lombok Strait. Pulling up at the lobby in our dusty car and disheveled justclimbed- a-mountain clothes we looked a bit out of place, but the staff didn’t flinch for a moment. We were greeted like royalty and shown straight to our ocean view room. There was only one problem, seeing as Amankila is built on the side of a very steep hill there were over 100 steps going up and down that were necessary to traverse to get to our room. Our legs screamed at the thought.
This was going to be painful, especially as we would have to walk this way over 20 times in the next 48 hours to move from room to pool to room to restaurant and back to the pool again. Strangely enough, the exercise helped to stop the muscles from going into total atrophy, and by the end of the two days we were almost back to normal. Luxury and physical therapy, who would have thought? The deep tissue massage helped, as so did the two days of lying by the pool and swimming, dining on their fine food and finer wine and not doing too much. Being surrounded by opulence and exquisite service certainly eased those aching muscles back to normality and by the time it came to leave we were feeling no pain at all.
So, my recommendation if you climb a volcano is to make sure you have a couple of days to recover, and if you find yourself in the vicinity of Amankila, book yourself in. You will never want to climb another mountain in any other way again. Would we do it again? We would return to Amankila in a heartbeat, it’s a gem, but the mountain has been climbed and crossed off the list. The memories are more than enough and we thank the gods deeply for that.
