The long road there
I had quite a nice lie in today, although I would have welcomed a longer one! We were climbing a local mountain today, Gunung Lambak, so before breakfast, we got our backpacks ready for the hike. For breakfast, we had quite a bizarre combination of noodles and chicken nuggets. To be fair, it was actually decent and I enjoyed it. Once we’d finished and had a 5-minute breather to let it go down, our journey began.
For more info on Gunung Lambak, click here.
According to the maps, it was around a 30-minute walk to the base of the mountain. It definitely seemed to take longer than that, considering the Sun was already melting us into the ground. It did seem to drag on for a while, going from urban, to a long country lane, back to an urban area. We even had a snack on the way there as it felt so long. Once we eventually got to the base of the mountain, we had a quick, sweaty breather, before tackling the small giant.
The climb
The first few hundred metres was an incline path made of concrete, nothing too exciting, except the quiet nature around us. Then, we got to a central point where there were several different paths. We got a bit confused, but luckily a local helped us in the right direction. It seemed the ‘path’ we chose was less path and more mud and stone, plus tree root steps. This ascent was around 30-40 minutes, but it was extremely humid, so I was sweating buckets like never before. We even had to use our hands and feet to haul ourselves up some of the ‘steps’.
For our most difficult mountain climb, click here!
When I finally saw the top of Gunung Lambak, a flood of relief washed over me. Both of us had to wring our shirts out because they were so wet through. To dry them, we hung them on a nearby pole. There weren’t many clouds, so the view was pleasant; we could see plenty of mountains and the town below. There were a few other locals at the top. They asked us to take a photo with them, which we obliged to. Not sure if it was any good as we were both shirtless and sweating to hell and back.
The long road home
Towards the end of our rest, a monkey tried to make off with one of our backpacks. Fortunately, the bag was too big for it, so it scuttled off into the trees. When we stared into the trees, we saw quite a lot of monkeys staring back at us, so a fruitless stand off ensued. We eventually left, and began our descent to the beginning. This path was also quite muddy and full of tree roots, but no where near as bad as ours was. Even when we did get to the bottom, we had the long walk back to town. In this heat, it made it doubly hard.
On the way back, we nipped into a mall, different to the one yesterday, and got some grub. The food was actually pretty nice, they had a nice food bar in there. Once we reached our hostel, we decided to have a major chill for a few hours. We really needed the recuperation. After a few hours did pass, we decided to take a walk back to the mall we played bowling at yesterday. It was dark by now, so we saw the town in a different light, pardon the pun. We had one last meal at the mall, before returning to the hotel and turning in for the night.
