5 Days in East Java
I first visited East Java is one of Indonesia’s most captivating regions, as a broke backpacker in 2019 armed with just a Fuji x100 (I still miss that camera).
After spending time in the neighbouring island of Bali I decided to head back down memory lane for a whirlwind 5 day trip photographing
the otherworldly landscapes it has to offer. East Java is relatively easy to travel you can reach the region by plane, train or even boat if coming from Bali so 5 days was the perfect amount of time.
I flew from Bali to Surabaya’s Juanda International Airport, as I have previously visited Surabaya I opted to save time and jump straight into a taxi heading South to Malang to spend my first day.
Malang is home to Jodipan a colourful slum village that was close to being demolished a few years back until some students from the university of Malang decided to paint the entire village with the aim to attract tourists - it seemed to work. Since then the colours have started to fade but it still attracts tourists daily from all over the world.
After an evening exploring the friendly and colourful Malang I was up bright and early heading further South to Tumpak Sewu via a local driver organised by my homestay. When I said that East Java is home to otherworldly landscapes I think Tumpak Sewu sums it up perfectly, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to see some wild places over recent years and this place is right up there. A waterfall and smouldering active volcano both surrounded by lush jungle all in the same frame, absolutely out of this world in my opinion. After shooting photos and video with the drone at sunrise we headed down into the base of the waterfall for a small fee of 20,000 IDR.
While in the area we also checked out another natural gem, the waterfall Kapas Biru. After a 30-40 minute walk/scramble through the bush we were greeted with this incredible towering waterfall surrounded by a lush green jungle. This has to be up there with one of the nicest waterfalls i’ve ever visited. As its quite the unpaved walk in, we had the whole place to ourself. Opening times for Kapas Biru is 7.30am - 3.30pm and costs 15.000 IDR.
Leaving the waterfalls in search of volcanoes, we headed to Mount Bromo, booking a ride through our homestay in Tumpak Sewu. After the eruption at Semeru in December 2022 it makes this quite a tough drive, this took us about 6 hours to get from Tumpak Sewu to our homestay at the base of the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park because a lot of the roads and village have sadly been impacted.
The following morning, we had a super early start of 2.45am to jump in the back of a jeep heading for sunrise at the viewpoint opposite Mount Bromo. This was my second time visiting this crazy place but this time I wanted to come back and photograph it with my drone. The low fog that morning created for some incredible conditions and it was great to walk about with this shot from above. This is the amazing thing about photography we are constantly having to adapt within the moment and revisiting places we have been to before always bring us different conditions and the opportunity to capture the same place differently.
With these organised jeep tours to Bromo after watching sunrise from the view point you head down to the base where you can walk up to the smouldering crater of Mount Bromo. However this isn’t something I personally wanted to do as it was super super busy, instead I asked my driver to go for a drive in his jeep so I could take some photos of it with the Mars like landscape behind.
This epic morning was the first of 2 early starts pretty much after finishing up photographing the jeep we were on our way to our next destination the beautiful volcano of Kawah Ijen.
To get there, from Bromo we took a taxi to the city of Probolinggo and then jumped on a 4 hour train to Banyuwangi - the gateway town to Ijen. On the train I booked our transport to Ijen via whatsap after finding some numbers on online. We arrived at our homestay around 10pm just in time for about an hours sleep as we were getting picked up at midnight to hike Ijen. I think the only other time i’ve ever put an alarm on for the same day is when i hiked Ijen previously….
As we drifted off into a sleep the alarm went off and our lovely homestay owner gave us a knock on the door to tell us he had made us coffee and fried Banana, what a legend. The drive from Banyuwangi to the base of Ijen is just over an hour. We arrived conveniently early so you can sit at one of the many food and drink vendors, it was a cold morning so we huddled round the fire with a coffee and waited for the gates to Ijen to open at 2am.
The hike to Ijen isn’t long or hard, but it can be very dusty and like most natural wonders, full of like minded people all heading in the same direction. Im sure it wasn’t as busy as this when I previously liked here but i’m guessing this has become a super popular spot.
On my last visit here I ventured down into the banks of the crater to witness the incredibly hard working sulfur miners and the blue flame so opted to skip it and spend more time capturing the crater. For me, this trip was more about capturing the crater lake from above. We arrived at the crater rim about an hour before sunrise searching for a good spot to launch my drone for when the light was right. Just before the sun came up, I also witnessed my first ever shooting star which was pretty wild and a moment and in a place ill never forget.
As the sun started to rise and my hands and feet started to defrost, I flew yhe drone to see this otherworld place from above a fitting end for this whirlwind 5 day adventure.
