Part 2 of 3

(Article courtesy: John Waterhouse)

This is the second of three installments about my bicycle adventure: eighteen weeks, 10,800 kilometers and three countries, Indonesia, East Timor, and Australia. I rode this route from August 2014 to December 2014.  These articles are my attempt to summarize my impressions of the geography of the three countries as seen from the saddle of a bike and, the social, cultural, and culinary experiences that I had.

Java

I left you, dear reader, on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra.  We are on our way to Australia but first must complete our bike ride in Indonesia.  This installment will take us across the islands of Java, Bali, Lombok, Flores, Sumbawa, and Timor, a ride of about six weeks.   The next installment will be to describe the ride in Australia. 

Cartina on Java, the second island in our journey, is a 32 KM ferry ride from Kalinda, Sumatra.  With a population of 140 million in an area smaller than England, Java is densely populated.   The island is oriented from west to east and our route is basically on the south side of the island.  This route was chosen, not because it is easier, but to kept us away from the most densely populated and heavily trafficked parts of the island.

Java is a volcanic island.   Our route does not avoid volcanoes, active or dormant.  The real meaning of volcanic was made all too clear on our third day on Java.   The riding notes indicated a shortish 71 KM ride.  The elevation gain was 2,500 meters.  That is a lot.  The payoff was incredible scenery as we passed through the different climate and agricultural zones going up a volcanic mountain.   At the bottom, a rain forest.  Ascending, we passed through coconut groves, fruit farms, vegetable farms of cabbage, garlic, beans and much more. At the top, a tea plantation with its perfectly manicured beds of tea plants that stretched for kilometers around the mountain top.  The agricultural variety and productivity of this area is astounding. I had no idea that there could be as many shades of green as I saw ascending that mountain.  Spectacular is an understatement. 

The largest city on our route through Java was Yogyakarta, the only royal city in Indonesia still ruled by a sultan.  It is a city with deep academic, artistic, and cultural roots.  At the time of this ride, I was associated with Academics Without Borders which is an organization that aids universities in developing countries.  One of our projects was at the State Islamic University of Yogyakarta where we helped establish and operate a Center for Students with Disabilities.  I had the pleasure of visiting the students and staff at this project and was deeply impressed with their commitment and enthusiasm. Many of the students who received assistance from the Center would not have been able to attend university had it not been for the support provided to them.

One of the main tourist attractions of Yogyakarta is the seventh century Buddhist temple, Borobudur.   It is a huge pyramidic temple with statues and carvings full of symbolic meaning.  I wonder how it happened that so many iconic temples and shrines were built in vastly different parts of the world within a few centuries of each other?  Examples include some of the great cathedrals of Europe, Angor Wat in Laos, and the Myan temples in Mexico. 

Five riding days and 520 KMs to the east brought us to the Bromo Tengger park, home to the Bromo volcanos.  As can be imagined this is very rugged country.  Our hotel was perched on the edge of the volcano so we could look down onto a broad basin of fine dust which had once been the active part of the volcano.  Two smaller volcanos have erupted in the bowl and one of them is still active.  Several of us took a jeep ride down to explore this fascinating lunar landscape and the Sulphur spewing cauldron. 

A funny thing happened when I climbed up to the active volcano rim to look in at the smoking, steaming lava inside.  The inside slope was very steep and covered with slimy rocks.  As I looked closely, I saw a man scampering among the rocks.  It was a most perilous venture as one slip would have him plunge to his death into the boiling sulfur pit.  As I looked more closely, I could see that he was chasing a duck.  The duck avoided capture for some time but finally the guy caught it and slowly returned to the rim.  When I walked around to where he came out, he had the duck tethered to a rock and had several bunches of artificial flowers beside it. It turns out the flowers were sold by some fellows further down the mountain to tourists who believed that a wish would come true if they threw the flowers into the volcano.  This fellow was retrieving the flowers for resale.  The duck which was probably tethered all along was a cover for his flower retrieving business.  I said to him, what is with the duck.  His reply: “it is my duck”. 

I want to pass along some of my observations on Javanese traffic. If the population of Java is 140 or so million then there must be at least that number of motor scooters and motorcycles.  They are everywhere and driven by everyone and serve most every purpose.

Who rides them?  Kids who appear to be as young as ten ride them to school and elsewhere.  These kids are a hazard.  They have the attention span of ten-year-old and the showoff instincts of the same age group.  Both boys and girls wiz about chatting to their friends, talking on their phones and doing the kinds of things that kids do.  Many of them also try to engage me in conversation as I peddled down the road.  I am convinced that kids here do not actually attend school, but they spend most of the day going to or coming from school.  As many of them have motor bikes this means that the areas around schools are very congested.

Matrons as old as me also ride them as does everybody in-between.   Overall, it is quite amazing that people seem to scoot in and out of the tightest spots without incident.  I liken motor bike traffic to a school of fish that ebbs and flows with apparent direction and purpose around obstacles and responds to cues that are imperceptible to the rest of us.  A bicycle becomes part of the school and seems to fit in quite nicely. 

Larger vehicles also fit into this flow and can be seen as the bigger fish whose presence is noted and commands respect but is subject to similar forces as are their smaller brethren.  Trucks of various sizes seem to command the most respect.  Invariably they are overloaded with produce, goods, and items of all descriptions.  The largest of these would be considered smallish by North American standards but what they lack in size they more than compensate for in load factor and aggression. 

There are large numbers of every variety of bus created by mankind.  At the bottom of the pecking order are the privately operated vans that pick up passengers almost anywhere and stop to let people out at wherever they want.  Regional busses carry on at great speed and with great aggression.  One brushed me as I and he were rounding a corner.  No damage.  The large intercity busses tend to dominate their space and could be thought of as the sharks in the school of fish. Perhaps the most amazing thing about motorbikes is the vast range of stuff that they transport.  Five and six member families seem to fit on quite effortlessly.  Produce from several fifty kilo bags of rice to the season’s hay crop get from here to there via motorcycle.    I saw a motorbike outfitted with racks hauling about six or so logs on either side of the driver.  My personal favorite was a bike with a large bag of stuff tied on behind the driver.  The stuff turned out to be a couple of dozen or so ducks each with its own hole cut in the sack through which the duck could stick out its soon to be eliminated head. Others in our group seem to prefer the three goats that were being taken to market by motorbike.

As interesting as the scenery and ride are, the people of Indonesia are incredibly fascinating and varied.  Every day one responds to literally thousands of “hello mister” calls.  I must say that it gets a bit tiring, to the point where I would like to get a tee shirt with hello printed on the back so I wouldn’t have to verbally respond.  Almost always when I stop for a cold drink at a roadside store (read hovel) I can engage in a broken English conversation.   I was entertained one day by a lady who explained that she was from Sumatra and who introduced me to her two daughters, aged nine and elven.  We all had a good laugh at our limited ability to communicate in either English or Indonesian, but we understood each other nonetheless.  This kind of experience is repeated almost every day.

On September 28 we finished the Java section of our ride in Ketapang from where we took a ferry to Bali.  Before leaving Java, I should disclose health and injury problems that afflicted our troop.  We have had one broken collar bone, some bruised and broken ribs, a concussion serious enough for an evacuation to Singapore, and various cuts and bruises.  I took a tumble and got some significant road rash.  There have been some GI issues, a urinary infection for me and respiratory issues for several.  Four riders have had to retire entirely, or from portions of the tour.  Not an easy ride!

Lombok is the next island to the east and will be followed by Sumbawa then Flores. Our combined distance so far is 4,219 KM in 37 riding days (only 6,500KM more to go!) and our total elevation gain has been 42,419M.  That is about 8 times up Mount Everest from sea level. 

Bali, Lombok, Flores, Sumbawa, and Timor

The transition from Java to Bali was remarkable.  One could go for weeks in Java without seeing another Caucasian face or trace of western culture or food.  Bali is a tourist haven, especially for Australians.  So, western influence is pervasive, prices are much higher, and the feel of the place is much different from Java.  We stayed in Ubud which seems to have an art gallery on every street, which is next to a statue and shrine store which are both beside a wood carver and wood furniture store.   Altogether pleasant but so different from Sumatra and Java as to seem like a different country entirely.  Bali is primarily Hindu while Java and Sumatra are primarily Muslim.  The three days we were on Bali was probably about the right amount of time to spend there.

There is an imaginary line between Bali and Lombok called the Wallace line.   Wallce was a mid-nineteenth century biologist who studied animal and plant life throughout the East Indies.  He noted that to the south and east of a line separating various Indonesian islands the flora and fauna were very different from each other.  To the north of this line plants and animals had Asiatic characteristics but to the south they were more Australian like.  He attributed this to evolution and developed a theory of evolution by natural selection at about the same time as Darwin did.  The story goes that when Darwin learned that Wallace was about to publish his findings, Darwin was motivated to publish his first and so, he rather than Wallace, became the father of the theory of evolution.  My own Wallace observation is that there is a very marked difference in the climate and topography as we proceed south and east.  It is much dryer and more desolate with much lower population density and the land is much less fertile.  While some ways, Lombok is a Bali wannabe, but it has a long way to go.  There are fewer tourists, there is much less traffic, and people appear to be much poorer. 

What has not changed between islands is how friendly and nice many of the locals are.  We stopped for lunch one day on the grounds of a fish restaurant.  Even though we had our own lunch fixings, the family who ran the restaurant treated us to iced coconut drinks with hot tea and cake for dessert.  At lunch one of our hosts noticed the road rash on my leg.  As we were joking about my fall, the elderly matriarch of the establishment who was dressed in full Muslem garb, joined us, and indicated that she also had road rash.  She proceeded to hike up her dress so that we could compared our wounds. 

The trip progresses.  Having completed Lombok and Sumbawa and progressed to the island of Flores, the islands have become very dry and desolate.  Where there is no irrigation, nothing is green as the end of the dry season is now. There is some shrimp farming and some fishing, but the people seem very poor.

The ferry ride from Sumbawa to Flores was to have been six hours.  In fact, we were on the ferry for more like nine hours.  Much time was spent loading the ferry as several trucks were overloaded and too high to fit on the vehicle deck.  Hours were spent peeling off the top layers of cargo, then a bit more to make the truck fit. All this was done on the ramp to the ferry, and it makes one wonder why a simple measuring device was not employed in the marshalling area to see if trucks would fit or not.  When loaded, the cargo deck was packed to the rafters with no end of stuff, loose bags of produce, chickens, trucks, bicycles, motor bikes and miscellaneous things. 

We have stayed at some interesting hotels.  One of the attractions for me of the Indonesian part of this trip was that we would stay in a hotel each night.  No camping.  My sheltered life did not prepare me for the possibilities of what a hotel could be and still be called a hotel. 

At the upper end of the scale of places where we have stayed are perfectly acceptable resorts with a swimming pool, quite nice beach, a good restaurant and large and clean rooms.  Were it always so!

The other extreme, at what our guides called a basic hotel, resembled a medieval jail cell.   The bathroom was the highlight.  Showers were a dipper with a bucket or cistern of water.  The drain in the floor may or may not have worked.  The toilet was usually a sit toilet but might have been a squat toilet.  Both were flushed by pouring a few dippers full of water down the bowl.  Towels were not often supplied.  Toilet paper was usually not.  There was no sink- that was what the dipper was for.  Soap, never heard of it.

The bedroom was sparse with two single beds.  When there was a bottom sheet, for some strange reason, it is either cartoon animal print or the stars and stripes print.  There was never a top sheet.  The mattress was foam, thin and rested on plywood, boards, or spikes.  (Perhaps I exaggerate.)  There was no functioning air conditioning, but there might be fans, usually a number equal to the number of rooms that our group has minus two, which put a premium on arriving early. Large cockroaches were endemic.

Thankfully, most of these places did not have a restaurant.  Our morning and evening meals were taken at some local establishment.   This being a Muslim country, beer was not always available unless one could find someone with a motorcycle who wanted to earn a few hundred thousand rupiah by getting some.  Wine was extraordinarily expensive and couldn’t be drunk.  Some days, camping seemed like it would have been a great option. 

As we close in on Dili, we are approximately 5,500 KM from our starting point.  What a ride it has been. Transport from Ende on the island of Flores to Kupang on Timor was by air, not ferry as first planned. Turns out the ferry sails once per week on some weeks.  This was not “some weeks” so the bikes, much of our luggage and lunch gear was packed and shipped by truck to the opposite side of Flores, then by a more reliable ferry to Kupang.

Neither Kupang nor Ende have much going for them.  Both are backwater ports, although Kupang is a bit larger and has the regional government and a university which give it a marginally greater cosmopolitan feel.  I would not recommend either of them to even a desperate to get off the beaten track traveler. 

The Island of Timor is very different from the other islands that we have visited.   Geologically, it is not volcanic but was created by an uplifting of an ancient seabed, much as the Rocky Mountains were.  Geologically speaking, Timor has more in common with Australia than with the rest of Indonesia. The soil is much less fertile and agriculturally less productive.  The people look different from those on other islands.  They are heavier set with Polynesian features as opposed to Malayan, Chinese or Indian features. 

Eastern Timor was a Portuguese colony rather than a Dutch colony as was much of the rest of Indonesia and Western Timor.  There are many more Christians than Muslims on Timor and I think that we have had our last 4:30 AM wake-up call to prayers.  Some claim and I think that I agree that the people have somewhat more of an edge here than in the western parts of the country.  East Timor which was at war with Indonesia until quite recently is an economic basket case with the lowest per person income in Asia.  Their currency is the US dollar, and the official language is Portuguese, and the main source of employment and income is the UN.   

Next is travel and two rest days in Darwin.  Civilization!!  (Although many Australians would question whether Darwin is civilized.)

The next installment will be to describe the ride in Australia. 

– John Waterhouse