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Camping on stunning beaches, eating chicken heads at the local hospital, and meeting amazing people would mark my first week of cycling on Lombok.

I had taken the morning ferry from Bali and with my luggage in the hold and the bike strapped to the roof we set off at breakneck speed for the island of Lombok which I would be calling home for the next couple of weeks.

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When the boat arrived at the port of Bangsal only 3 of us got off as the rest of the passengers were headed for the Gili Isles which lay about 1 km off the coast.  The Gili’s are three stunning tiny coral islands and are a must visit for an overnight trip from either Lombok or Bali.  On this trip I would not be visiting them, but when my wife flies in to Bali in 4 weeks time to meet up with me we may pop over for a night or two.

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Once I had put the luggage back on the bike I had big plans to cycle 65km to Senaru where I would climb the active volcano that dominates the landscape in the northern half of Lombok.  However, as I cycled away from the port I had only gone 1okm when I saw a sign for Tugu Hotel on Sira Beach where my wife and I had stayed a couple of years ago. I decided to pop in to see if it was as good as I remembered.

As I was cycling down the road a guy on a bike stopped and asked where I was going.  He had bloodshot eyes and was a bit downtrodden around the edges if you know what I mean.  He said he knew a place to stay for 10 dollars on the beach and so I said that I would take a look and we cycled off down the road.  On the way we took a detour into one of the villages to pick up his mobile phone.  This made me feel slightly more comfortable about following him down to the beach now that I had at least met some of his family.

Off we went once again and came to a T-junction where the Tugu Hotel was signposted right and we turned left. After 5 minutes we came to the beach that he was taking me too.   On the beach were a collection of shacks where locals could come at night for a drink and snack and sit by the ocean.  For my 10 dollars I had a choice of either a sleeping table on the beach, or if it rained I could use an abandoned boat.  I didn’t exactly laugh, as that would have been rude, but I made my excuses and left as I didn’t fancy either of the options, especially as I had a tent which would be more comfortable and free.

I retraced my steps to the T-junction and followed the signs to the Tugu Hotel.  There was a security post at the entrance to the hotel and I cycled past the guard with a wave and made my way down the driveway.  I’m not sure what the guard thought as I passed him but he didn’t stop me. I parked my bike at reception and explained why I was there and they said no worries about me leaving my bike with them while I headed for the beach.

The last time that my wife and I had stayed here I had blagged an upgrade to the honeymoon suite that had a private pool and roof terrace where your own personal chef could cook you dinner.  Here are a couple of photos of the private villa we stayed in from the last time we were here.

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I checked online and even the basic rooms were well over £200 per night and the room that we had been upgraded to was £450 a night.  I definitely wouldn’t be staying here on this trip. (Tugu Hotel) Still, I had been given a ‘day pass’ so grabbed a towel from the pool boy and headed for the beach and it was as stunning as I remembered.

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A security guard came across and asked if I was a guest at the hotel (obviously I didn’t fit the type in my cycling shorts) and when I explained what I was doing he was fine and  me alone.  Once in the sea I decided that I wasn’t going to be cycling to Senaru that day and instead I would spend a couple of days camping on the beach.

I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at the Tugu Hotel and as it was getting dark I walked back to reception and collected my bike and followed the road to the end of their property line. Here there was a path which cut down onto the beach which the fishermen from a local village used to get to their boats.

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The beach here was not as wide, or as manicured, as that in front of the Tugu Hotel, but it was still stunning and so I found a lovely spot under a tree and set up my tent.

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After that there was only one thing left to do and that was to get in the sea.  As I lay in the sea and looked around me I nearly had to pinch myself to check that it was real.

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As it was getting dark I started to unpack my gear and get settled in for the night.  As the sun was going down the fisherman began to take their boats out on the water and a few of them popped by to say hello and gestured into the air at something flying.  I honestly had no idea what they were talking about and just smiled back at them and said terima kasah, which means thank you.

As the sun finally set I found out what they fishermen were talking about as a swarm of flying ants erupted from god knows where.  There were literally thousands of them flying around and I dived into my tent.  I was a little too late zipping up the tent doors which had been left wide open as a fair few of the flying ants had joined me inside the tent.  It was pitch black outside by now and the fisherman must of wondered what the hell was going on as the light from my torch danced around as I tried in vane to kill all of the flying ants that had joined me.  The outside mesh of my tent was covered in hundreds of flying ants and the floor of my tent was also crawling with tiny creatures that I assume were ants whose wings had fallen off.

The fishermen on the beach were also being led a merry dance by the swarm of flying ants as they flailed (is this a word??) their arms around their heads to get the flying ants out of their hair.  It really did feel like we were under attack and then suddenly they were gone and all that was left was a pile of wings which had fallen off the ants.  I have no idea where they came form, or where they went, but it was one hell of a crazy 15 minutes.  You live and learn and so I would be prepared for them the following night !!!!

Now that it was safe to come out of the tent it was time for dinner and so I cranked up the stove and heated some water for a brew and a pot noodle.  I have gone a bit maverick with the pot noodles lately as I have discovered that you can fit in a whole extra packet of mee noodles into the pot noodle bowl for an extra big helping of noodles.  It’s a bit like when you open a large packet of crisps to discover that it only contains about 30 crisps.  This way one helping of pot noodle will keep me going until morning.  That night there was a full moon and I was lay in my tent I could have read a book without any additional light as it was that bright.  What an amazing way to drift off to sleep.

The scene at the beach the next morning did not disappoint either as I was woken by the sound of villagers walking cows down the beach in front of the tent.  I have no idea where they were going but the cows seemed to know the way.

The first job of the day was to get a brew on and then look for breakfast options along the beach as I didn’t fancy pot noodle again for breakfast.

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After a cuppa I wandered down the beach in the hope of finding something to eat.  About 500 metres I cam across some wooden huts and at a couple of these there were women setting up for the day and preparing food.

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That was my breakfast problem sorted and they prepared me a cup of tea and a bowl of Gado Gado, which is an Indonesian staple dish of noodles, blanched vegetables topped off with a spicy peanut sauce and served with crunchy prawn crackers.

After breakfast the rest of my day was taken up with doing exactly nothing but laying on the beach, having the odd swim and heading back to the ladies at meal times.  The only people I saw was the odd fisherman in the water and villagers bringing their cows back in the evening.

As it was going dark I was safely inside my tent with the doors zipped up as the flying ant invasion began.  An amazing spectacle to watch and the outside of my tent was covered once again with them but within 15 minutes they had all vanished.  It seems like it is a nightly occurrence on this particular beach and was not something that I saw repeated at other beaches that I stopped at along the coast.

Here are a few pictures of the beaches that I stopped at over the next couple of days and the people I saw along the way:

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                           Traditional fishing. The ‘thing’ on his back is a net in which he puts the fish he catches.                                  On his hat are the spare hooks and line.

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Fishermen taking a break from the midday sun

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The mountain in the distance is Mount Rinjani which is an active volcano. I would be climbing it in a few days.

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The only problem with sleeping on the beach long-term are finding food (you cant live on pot noodle forever) and taking the odd shower as salt water gets a bit sticky after a while.  I had no real issue finding food as nearly every beach I stayed on had a local food stall of some variety where I could get fresh water to drink and stock up on the bare essentials.

For showers being western definitely helps as I would wander into hotels that I came across on the beaches and just use their facilities.  There are a few stunning hotels along this stretch of the coast where no expense has been spared on giving the guests a luxurious time.  At each of these nobody really questioned me as I popped into use the showers and the security guards and staff that did were not bothered when I explained what I was doing.

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The other ‘modern’ issue with camping on the beach is that I needed a top up of power every now and again to recharge the various devices I had. The posher places tend to have electicity points close to the beach.  Here is one of the ‘huts’ that I popped into to recharge the batteries.

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If you are cycling through Indonesia then definitely add Lombok to the route as the beaches are both beautiful and often deserted which makes camping on them a must. Here is a video that I put together to show life living on the beach:

After a few days of beach hopping it was time to get back on my bike and continue cycling.  In the last 10 days I had only covered 20 km from Johor Bahru to Singapore, 15 km from Bali airport to Senur beach, 60km from Senur to the ferryport at Padang Bai and about 30 km on Lombok.  This was under a 5th of what I was covering on ‘mainland’ Asia but I didn’t care as life was good on the beach and I deserved a ‘holiday’.

My destination that evening would be Senaru and once again I didn’t really have any plan of where I would stay.  All I knew was that the road would be steep up to the village as it is on the side of a volcano.  As it was getting dark I was still about 5 km short of my goal and the road was getting steeper and I was slowly grinding my way up the road in the granny gear.  Each mini rise that I passed was like a small victory but it was a hard hard end to the day and I was still a good 5km short of my destination that night.  With the incline that I was now pushing up this would easily take me nearly an hour and I was fast running out of daylight.

I had already decided that I was going to camp instead of paying for a hotel and was keeping an eye out for likely spots.  There was a water channel running down the side of the road with crystal clear mountain spring water in it and so when I found a spot to camp I would be able to get a wash and have water to cook with.

I still had not found a good spot to camp when I passed the local hospital and it was set in a large plot of land with grassy areas either side. This would be perfect and so I cycled into the hospital and walked into the large waiting/treatment room.  At first Rina and Zur, who were the nurses on duty that evening, did not really understand what I wanted as the people who normally walk in need treatment rather than somewhere to sleep.

Once they realised what I was looking for they were more than happy for me to put up my tent and within a few minutes just about all of the staff had come out to say hello. As it was going dark I started to put my tent up on the lawn area to the side of the hospital.

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Once I was set up I just needed to get a wash and went into the hospital to find somewhere to wash.   Rina said that there was a toilet block at the end of the main corridor in the hospital where I could get a ‘bucket’ shower and wash out my cycling clothes that I had worn that day.

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I was now clean and had a nice flat piece of grass to sleep on.  The last thing to do was to get some food and this was sorted when one of the nurses took me to a local place next to the hospital.  There we were joined by others as they finished their shift and stopped to say hello on their way home.

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The food was really tasty but after the main dish I was given something which looked like a deep fried pork ball that you get from Chinese takeaways back in England.

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Without much thought I chomped into one only to discover that it was in fact a deep fried chickens head and I now had the front half of it in my mouth.  Despite giving it a good chew there was no way I could get it all down even with the help of a few slugs of water.  The fleshy bits of skin and brains were okay but the skull and beak section were like crunching on sand and got spat back out.  Apparently, the parents tell their children that if they eat the chicken heads that they will get bigger brains.

Now that I had dinner it was time to catch up with transferring the days photos from my camera onto the laptop and went and sat in the waiting room of the hospital to do this.  Quite a few of the nurses on duty, and even the relatives of patients, came and sat with me from time to time to look through my photos.  I was joined by Lilly at the end of her shift and we sat talking for a while about my travels and her future plans.  As it was getting late we decided to call it a night and as we headed our separate ways she said that she would bring me breakfast on her way back from the mosque in the morning.

As I headed back to my tent outside on the front steps there was a family, who I assume were relatives of a patient at the hospital, who were setting up there own sleeping arrangements. I never did find out who they were there for but I hope that the outcome was good.

In the morning Lilly, who was one of the midwifes at the hospital, was as good as her word and stopped by my tent to bring me breakfast and hot coffee on her way back from the mosque, which was a fantastic gesture and tasted amazing as I lay in my tent enjoying breakfast in bed.  The picture below is of Lilly (on the left) and Eka, her sister, who was visiting her at the hospital.

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After washing in the toilets again I packed up my tent and was just about to head out when the husband of the dentist at the hospital, whose name I never got, called me over to give me some eggy bread and another cup of coffee which was amazing.

Here a couple of photos that were taken with the staff as I was about to head off for the steep uphill cycle to Senaru.  In the first photo below, from left to right, are Rizka, Putu, Bunda Lupus and Rina, I hope I have your names in the correct order, who was the nurse on duty when I arrived the night before.

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As I cycled away form the hospital my only job to do that day was to book a trek to climb to the crater rim of the volcano that I was currently cycling up the base of towards the village of Senaru.  On my way up the hill I passed lots of children heading for school:

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and others who were more intent on ‘surfing’ their way down the irrigation channels:

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This mountain road was very very steep once I left Bayan and so I stopped at the first tour place that I saw – Rinjani Tropis and as Huzni, the owner of the tour company, gave me a very very good deal I booked a 2 day/1 night trek up the mountain for the following day. This was one time that people thinking I was skint as I was on a bike seemed to work in my favour.

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The tour price also included 1 nights accommodation at a hostel in Senaru so I was all sorted.  The only issue was that the accommodation lay another 2km’s up the hill and so off I went for a very tough ride.  I could have left some of my panniers at the tour place as I would be cycling back there in the morning to start the trek but that would have been cheating.

It was now still before 9am and as I left the hospital Lilly had said that I should check out a couple of waterfalls in the area and so I packed a day pack and off I went a wandering and hiked out to the waterfalls.  The view along the path to the waterfall was pretty spectacular as I had a clear view all the way back to the ocean

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After around hiking for 30 minutes I caught a glimpse of the first waterfall through the trees and it looked pretty spectacular:

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Up close it was even more beautiful and there is something slightly mesmerising about watching water cascade down the side of a mountain:

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Lilly had said that the second waterfall was even more picturesque than the first and so after having a quick dip under the waterfall I headed off in search of the second one.  As it was still early I had the place pretty much to myself and when I reached the second waterfall it was even more spectacular than the first and had a much larger swimming pool:

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After a couple of hours at the waterfall I was getting hungry and so hiked back towards the village of Senaru in search of food.  On my way back I passed a fair few tour groups heading towards the waterfalls and was glad that I had had an early start to the day as the pools would soon be pretty packed.

My constant company on the way back were monkeys that sat happily in the surrounding trees of the forest

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After food there was only really one thing to do:

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Open a tinny and enjoy the view.  This cycling lark is a hard life as I spent another beautiful day on the stunning island of Lombok.

I had enjoyed a fantastic few days camping in various stunning spots around northern Lombok and had met many beautiful people who had helped me out along the way.  That night would me the first time on Lombok that I had a solid roof and four walls and a bed to sleep in and I was in bed fairly early as the next day would be a 5.30am start as I would be treking up to nearly 4000 metres to camp on the rim of an active volcano….

Thanks for taking the time to read about my cycling adventures and now that I have found wifi I have added the Bali video to my previous post – click here to watch Bali, Indonesia

Stewart

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Camping on Lombok
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One thought on “Camping on Lombok

  • September 21, 2016 at 10:38 am
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    Absolutely awesome. Wishing you all the very best. I’ll need to get up there some time.

    Reply

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