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After a few days camping at the beach it was time to get on with the job of cycling my way across Sumbawa. In front of me lay over 500 km of hills, hills and more hills, plus a final cycle up the slopes of Mount Tambora which is an active volcano.  

Mount Tambora last exploded in 1815 and the eruption killed thousands, plunged much of the world into a chill.  Lets hope that after my close call on Mount Rinjani it stays silent while I cycled its slopes !!!!!

As I reached ‘civilisation’ after my time camping I was once again connected with the outside world and I found out that I had made the local paper back home: Snakes and circumcision – hazards of a global  

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The paper had contacted me a couple of weeks ago to ask me about my trip and I had heard nothing from them since.  A friend back in Cheltenham had messaged to say that I was in the local paper and technically, at least, my mum was now a pinup girl on page 3!!!!

Even though I was now ‘famous’ in my own lunchtime it was time to get on with the job of continuing my cycle east.  First, I had to retrace my steps 50km north back to the ferry port that I had landed at a few days before.  I knew that there were a couple of steep sections along this road but once you have been over them once they never seem so bad a second time.

I had not even ridden 10km before I had my first adventure of the day.  I was cycling back to the main road when I passed a place where the noise was deafening and had no idea what they were doing so I went to investigate. I cycled through the gate and to be honest got a bit of a frosty welcome.  I wasn’t sure why until the boss man, Ali, came out and said that they were processing gold.  

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He was very happy to show me round and explain what was going on.  The whole process starts with a bag of rocks that they buy for about 50p from the local quarry.

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These rocks are then smashed by hand. In one hand the lady below has a hammer and the other a ring to keep the rock in place while she smashes it.

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The broken rocks are then put into these turning barrels where there are iron pipes which crush the rock into a powder. Also in the barrels are water, to dissolve the powder, and mercury, which attracts the gold to form an amalgam.

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The final part is when the mercury-gold amalgam is then heated using a blow torch to vaporise the mercury to obtain pure gold. After each heating with the blow torch the gold is dipped into acid to remove the outside crust and then reheated until pure gold remains.

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Who would have thought that – it is amazing the things you stumble across as you cycle through the countryside.  Here is a video I shot to record the process:

After a very informative break it was time to get on the bike and fisnish the job of retracing my route back north to where I landed nearly a week age.  As I neared the ferry port it was approaching lunchtime, and just before I descended out of the last hill back to the coast I stopped for lunch to enjoy the vista in front of me.

It seems that food places here only open in the morning and evening and at lunch time it is a veritable food desert. There are lots of places along the way to get a drink though and I pulled into one of these and broke out the stove to boil some water for a pot noodle.

Every time that I stop on Sumbawa people are fascinated by my bike and they continually want a photo.  The owner of the drinks stall was no different and he was so happy when I took his photo next to my bike.

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Here is a video that I shot whilst waiting for the water to boil to show you the environment that I was cycling through:

After lunch, it was time to descend out of the hills as the road turned east and took me back to the coast.  It was not only drinks stall holders who wanted a picture with the cyclist but, a new experience for me on this trip, locals on motorbikes would stop me for a selfie.

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Strangely, they would not want to take them on their own phones but with my camera.  Once, they had seen the picture they would ride away content even they they never had a copy of the picture as it was on my camera.  This would be a daily occurrence for the rest of my trip through Sumbawa.

The island was the least developed that I had travelled through with hardly any infrastructure and the majority of the people appeared to be subsistence farmers who lived off the land.  Outside of the odd town that I passed through the housing was virtually all of wooden or woven palm leaf construction.

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Despite this, without fail, every group of houses I passed had a giant satellite dish; obviously the TV was the main ‘entertainment’ option for many Sumbawans.

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That evening as it was going dark I cycled into the town of Alas and found a Losmen to stay at.  Hotels in Indonesia are rated along guidelines established by the Government and there are 3 categories – Star, Melati and Losmen. Losmen are the lowest, and cheapest grade.  The losman that I choose was fine – it had a bed, a shower and elrcticity whch are really the only 3 things that I care about.  If there are cockroaches or rats then they don’t bother me as I can assure you that they are more afraid of me than I am of them.

A quick tour of the town soon showed me that not much happened in an evening in Alas so after a quick bite to eat at a warung, local restaurant, I headed back to the hotel for an early night.

The next day the road led me back inland into the interior of the island and my day was a rollercoaster of a ride as I cycled through valleys full of crops followed by a climb over the ‘spine’ of a mountain range.

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I lost count of the number of valleys I crossed that day but each one seemed to grow different crops – some valleys concentrated on rice production while others sweetcorn, watermelon or spring onions to name just a few of the crops I cycled through. The ‘surprise’ of what was coming next kind of broke up the day.

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The roads here were beautifully smooth and the traffic was light. Before arriving on Sumbawa I had been warned by a few people to watch out for the bus drivers who had a reputation for being a bit mad behind the wheel.  Their reputation was well earned from the driving that I had seen although so far they had all given me a lot of space whenever they passed me on the road.

Surprisingly, the biggest danger were the monkeys that I constantly passed.  I have no idea whether it was my yellow panniers that were triggering them but a fair few times the ‘alpha’ male in the group would trigger one of the other monkeys to come flying across the road at me.  It was not my imagination – they had some sort of signal going on.

The pattern was that the males would sit by the road side and edge forward without confidence as I cycled past.  Then the ‘alpha’ male would kind of screech and the others would look at him.  I swear a few times I saw the ‘alpha’ nod, and one of the smaller monkeys would come flying across the road hissing at me and bearing its teeth like a dog.  Even though none of them had ever been brave enough to get close enough to actually try to bite me, or jump up on the back of the bike, it was enough motivation to keep pedaling up the hills as this was where I generally came across them.

As it was getting dark I had the choice of cycling onto the capital city, Sumbawa Besar, or stopping just short of it for the night.  A quick search on the internet indicated that there were no amazing attractions to see in the city so I headed off to the coast in search of a beach to camp on for the night.  This section of the coast is rocky and has no real beaches that I could call home for the night.  The only beach that I found which could have been a possibility was private, and so instead I took a hotel room instead.

I was back to covering +100km per day, which was something that I had not really done since southern Thailand, as I wanted to push onto the next island of Flores to tick off another item on my trip bucket list – a visit to the Komodo Dragons.  I still had a few hundred kilometers to cover before I could catch the ferry.

When I am covering large distances day in day out I get into a kind of pattern whereby I will take a lot of pictures and videos in the morning but in the afternoon I concentrate on clocking up the distance.  Today’s cycle of 130km would be my longest distance since returning from Europe, and by the end of the day I was feeling pretty tired.  As it was getting towards sundown I arrived at the town of Empang and as I cycled into the town I came across a Buffalo fashion parade.

Every town seems to have a central field area, and as I was cycling through the town I saw lines of well groomed buffalo dressed in bright coloured ‘clothes’. I pulled over to take a look and was immediately surrounded by hundreds of children – many who wanted selfies with me.

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It seems that each village in the area presents their best buffalo for judging. I think that the owner of the winner got a new sprung mattress for their bed but my translation may be wrong.

One of the locals also told me that if you want to insult somebody in Indonesian you just refer to them as “a buffalo in clothes”. A great break at the end of another hot and sweaty +100km day on the bike.  To show you the kind of reception that I get when I pull over on the road just watch this 2 minute video:

After signing a few autographs it was time to go find a place to stay for the night.  I had been told that there was a place next to the petrol station.  The only problem was that I never found a petrol station.  I did manage to find another losmen for the night though.

In the daytime I was still having difficlulty finding food, once the sun went down there was no problem as mom and pop places wheeled out their mobile food stations and got on with cooking up a feast.  My two staple dishes were Sato and Bakso.

The next morning I was woken early as marching bands paraded along the road that I had found a room the night before.

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I have no idea where they were going at that time of the morning but I didn’t mind as I had another long day of cycling ahead of me, and it’s not everyday that you are woken by a marching band outside your room.

Once I had finished breakfast it was time to get back on the bike and, thankfully, the road followed the coastline for most of the day. As I was up so early, in the fishing villages that I cycled through it was all hands on deck to bring in the night’s catch.

As each fishing boat arrives at the quayside all of the community lend a hand to bring in the catch and unload the boat.
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dscn3338 The fish are then wheeled down the jetty to be packed into ice and sent off to market.

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There are also many vendors who sell the fish direct from the quayside

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Here is a video that I recorded which shows you the energy and buzz that a new boat arrival at the quayside generates:

The other side to life in a fishing village is building the fishing boats. Many villages that I passed had an area where workmen were busy building the wooden boats. The boats are ‘hand’ built using a chainsaw to do the heavy cutting and then a hammer and chisel to finesse the pieces together.  An amazing process and a privilege to sit and watch the craftsmen at work.

I had now been on the road heading east for 5 days without a break and I was getting a bit bored of the ‘sanitised’ road in front of me.  Cycling the roads on Sumbawa was among the smoothest that I had experienced on the ride but a little bit of me wanted to bounce down some dirt tracks.  My destination that day would be a surfing beach called Lakey Peak (named after a world famous surfing break) and instead of staying on the main road I followed goat tracks for most of the day as I continued to snake my way across valleys and over hills.

If I had wanted to get to the beach before dark then I should have stayed on the main roads as when the sun set I found myself pushing the bike up a rocky path over a very very steep hill.  The only way that I could get the bike up the hill was to push it 1 metre and then apply the brakes while my feet caught up to then push it another metre up the hill.

When the sun finally set I was still about 15km from the beach and on the track that I was on it would not only have taken me a couple of hours but would of been very dangerous as I could have easily broken something.  I decided that the best course of action was to turn inland and cut across to the main road that I knew was running parallel to me about 3km away.  Even covering these 3 km’s by torch light took me over 30 minutes so I was glad that I had changed tack when I did.

The sun went down at just after 6pm and it was nearly 8 by the time I arrived at the beach.  This was the latest arrival time of the trip so far and I really don’t like cycling in the dark as this is when accidents tend to happen as many of the vehicles on the road drive without lights.

The main road did not run next to the beach, instead it ran about 200m behind the properties that fronted the beach.  As I had no idea what the layout of the beach accommodation was I chose one of the driveways at random and cycled down it in search of a room for the night.  The place that I had cycled into was called Monalisa and was deserted.  Not always a good sign when trying to find a place to stay.

The dogs that lived on the property alerted the manager to my presence soon enough as they gave me a barky welcome as I walked around trying to find signs of life.  The guy who runs the place turned out to be Zaire (not sure on the spelling) and he was a local guy who managed the place for the owner.

The accommodation on offer at Monalisa was wooden huts in a coconut grove with a path that led directly out onto the beach.  A very nice set up and the only thing to discuss was the price.  My opening gambit in these situations is to point out that I’m thinking about just camping the night on the beach but if the price is right I may think about taking a hut instead.  This seemed to work as the manager said I could take the hut for 150,000 rupiah for 1 night or if I stayed for 2 he would do it for 100,000 per night.  This is around £5 and at that price it was not worth camping so I checked in.

Now, the accommodation even at night looked a bit ropey so I said I would take it for 1 night and then see what I thought in the morning.  Eddy was fine with this and headed off back to wherever he had come from before the dogs had barked and I went to get settled in for the night.  One of the dogs followed me and when I turned in for the night it slept the night on the porch.

In the morning the view from the shore was pretty good.

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About 300m offshore there was a reef wall and this was where the surfers were congregated catching waves.  The barrels that they were surfing seemed to be huge even from this distance.  The zoom on my camera was not good enough to capture the action though. You can get a boat out to a viewing platform that has been attached to the reef if you want to take a closer look at the action.

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Even though I stayed In Lakey Peak for 3 nights I never took the boat out.  The main reason was the tides – I was essentially there at the wrong time as during the daytime was low tide and the reef becomes completely exposed.  The surfers were out at the break of day each morning to catch the waves and I never quite found the motivation to get up with them.

When the tide went out there was a small army of locals following the tide and collecting the fish that got isolated in the rock pools.  This was an easy way for them to get dinner I suppose.

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I was now cooking pot noodle for two as one of the beach dogs had ‘moved in’.  They are super friendly and survive by adopting travelers for the time that they are there.  Everywhere I went the dog followed.

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Most tourists who I saw walking down the beach also had been adopted by a dog and it was funny as you could tell the tourists who were staying in posher places as dogs were not allowed in and hence the dogs never seemed to follow them.

The accommodation that I was staying in was not too bad in the daylight – it had running water and electricity (sometimes) and the ant population inside was limited.  The other bonus was that I had the place completely to myself as nobody else was staying there.

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An Australian couple popped by on my third day to ask how much it was and they seemed pretty excited when I told them.  One of the staff showed them the room and I never saw them again.

Here is a video that I shot to show you where I was staying:

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After my third night at the beach it was time to say goodbye to ‘dog’ and get back on the road to head towards for Flores.  I would need to cycle to the ferry port at Sape which lay 2 days cycle away.  To get there I would need to cycle the lower slopes of Tambora volcano so I knew that I was in for a couple of hard days on the bike.

I decided to stick to the main road out of Lakey Peak, rather than cycle the goat track that I had used to get there a few days before.  This was a good decision as the road was fairly steep straight from the off and kept climbing for most of the day.

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dscn3392Around 11am I passed somewhere to eat and decided to take the opportunity to have a big bowl of Bakso while I could.

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After lunch the gradient of the road smoothed and I stayed in the mountains for most of the day.  Along the way I passed many rivers and in most of these you could see children playing:

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It was getting quite chilly in the mountains which was really nice and made a great change from the normal hot and sweaty conditions that I usually rode through.  All too soon though it was time to descend back to the coast and onto my destination for the day which was the city of Bima.

As I descended out of the hills the vista in front of me was a surprise – vast salt fields as far as I could see.

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I had not seen salt fields since my cycle out of Bangkok in Thailand.  Here is a video I shot to mark the occasion:

It was now time to cycle into Bima before it got dark.  This would be the first and only city that I would visit on my 500km transect of Sumbawa as I had not stopped in the capital, Sumbawa Basar, and all of the other places that I had passed through could be best described as villages.

My journey east was nearly completed and as this was the only city that I would see before leaving I decided to stay here and check out the city for a couple of nights before heading onto Flores.

I will finish this section of my journey east with one last video and hope you enjoyed following my cycle ride through Sumbawa:

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The journey east continues
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2 thoughts on “The journey east continues

  • October 10, 2016 at 1:57 am
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    Hi Stewart. Amazing post. I love the photos. Kids enjoyed the buffalo show and imagining you cycling up an active volcano. They’re also jealous of Penny, your beach dog.

    Reply

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