Walking the Camino de Santiago

 First published in Options, The Edge, on July 4, 2022 @ https://www.optionstheedge.com/topic/travel/going-distance-walking-camino-de-santiago-spain-and-portugal

The scallop shell, symbolic of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, has a series of converging lines which fuse at the base of the shell. It’s been pointed out that this is representative of the many routes that lead to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostella.

Legend has it that the remains of St James the Greater, Jesus’ disciple, was brought and buried here by his followers after his beheading in Jerusalem.  What was once an unmarked grave has since grown into the great cathedral of today.

Hiking Indonesia's Highest Volcano

First published in Options, The Edge Malaysia, May 22, 2017

Pain is so close to pleasure, terror a heartbeat away from sublime beauty

SB felt a draught on the back of his neck and turned around.  The back door of the van had worked itself loose.  It was now flapping freely, exposing the luggage compartment where our luggage was stored, and some of the luggage was missing, having tumbled out of the back. And we hadn’t even started our hike.

Our journey had begun some 8 hours earlier at Padang, the hot, bustling capital of West Sumatra province, best known for nasi padang, rice with often fiery condiments.  The journey had taken us to the highlands, dense with shaggy forests and extensive tea plantations, past the tranquil lake of Danau Atas, into the lowlands with quiet villages and through a heavy rainstorm that flooded the already rutted road in parts, and finally to the village of Kersik Tuo. 

At The Top of Java

First published in The Star, Adventure, October 5, 2015

Tumpang was a mere 90 minutes away by 4WD, yet it could have been a world removed, one of muggy, crowded lowlands, sclerotic traffic spewing poison from tailpipes, padi fields squeezed into unused chinks of land, and villages overgrown into each other in a single, incoherent mess.

But here, the sky was blue and uncluttered, vegetable farms climbed steep slopes on terraces, the air was cool and light. In the distance, emitting puffs of smoke on a regular basis, was the grey ash cone of Gunung Semeru. We passed by the epic caldera of Bromo, the earth blistered, its crust peeled back aeons ago, and healed in balmy grassland beneath a magically clear sky.

The village of Ranu Pane was nestled in a valley between terraced vegetable fields, lush with leek. It was a prosperous village of neat brick houses, tiled roofs and satellite dishes, in the highlands at 2100 masl. The 13 of us started our hike here, led by the amiable Agus, who had lost count of the number of times he had ascended Gunung Semeru.

The Javanese refer to the volcano as Mahameru, the heavenly mountain abode in Hindu mythology, an acknowledgment of the Majapahit-era religion, pockets of which cling tenaciously in small populations in the Tengger highlands, and for its status as the tallest volcano in Java.

The trail led through cool, dense forest at an easy amble, and by lunchtime we came across the valley where the forest yielded to grassland, the smooth curve of the valley widening into the bowl shaped receptacle which held the lake of Ranu Kumbolo.