A lone hiker taking a break while the light from the sun broke into a dance routine with the fast moving clouds.
The lone porter along the crater of the Mount Rinjani.
Without them, the climb would not even have made it past day 1. They are the miracle workers of Mount Rinjani. Each porter carries up to 30Kg worth of supplies on their shoulders up the mountains, very often reaching the check points way earlier than their city dwelling customers. They zipped up and down the mountain with such speed and ease it made me feel useless. By the time we caught up with them at our resting areas, they would have already set up our tents, makeshift toilets and halfway through cooking our meals. I can’t help but feel amazed everytime a porter overtakes us (which happens all the time) effortlessly. While I struggle up some of the steeper parts of the trail in fours, they simply stepped up, hands free, in slippers and sometimes barefooted. The equally amazing guides started out as porters when they were younger too.
As we moved up and down the slopes around Mount Rinjani, scenes like that kept appearing around us everytime we looked back. Before the trek, Macho, our guide, told us that he will tell us a method to trek up the summit. During the course of the trek, we all forgot about it and didn’t ask. On our 3rd day down the mountains, I asked him, what was it that he was supposed to tell us. He said, ‘when you trek up, do not look up. Instead, look back.’ The whole idea was so that you look at what you have achieved to motivate yourself rather than look at the path in front, which I agree, did not do anything positive to my morale. It’s always so near yet so far. Simple theory, but so effective.
My alarm woke me up at 130am in the morning. Feeling tired and excited at the same time, I stuck my head out of the tent and saw the milky way on the other side of the sky and lights from head lamps trickling up the slopes beside it. This was it.
Taken right after dinner. I was terribly hungry after the almost 9 hour hike up base camp at 2600m. Muscles that I never knew I had cramped up and legs went jelly. That night, I requested for double the serving of dinner and finished them in half the time. That was when I heard someone outside saying ‘look at the stars!’. I crawled out of my tent and quietly went ‘wow…’.
Due to a change of plans, we camped under the canopy of trees instead of the edge of the crater, overlooking the lake. But that didn’t dampen our spirits as most of us came out to enjoy the last night out in the wild with a round of Bintang for everyone. When I looked up, the Milky Way was just right there, in the middle of the opening.