You need to be brave enough to see in the dark

Day of the trip: who knows which. Time: 1:45 AM. The sound of alarm coming to wake us up and tell us that we have 8 minutes to go. Time for another story.

Thanks to the kindness of our friend Tirta, the guide we rented Bruno from, we negotiated what they call "a good price" and went climbing to Mount Batur. Or rather did a night trekking over an active volcano!

What does it take to go up that mountain? Well first being an early bird, then 40min of driving from Ubud to the breakfast location, one banana pancake and balinese coffee at 3AM, another 15 minutes of driving the car through dark streets of northern Bali and that's where it starts. Local guide for each group, everyone gets a flashlight and off we go.

First incredible observation? The night sky. Every single part of it covered with stars. Milky way waiting for photographers to get it enclosed in the picture.

Initial part of the trekking is quite an experience. True session for imagination to go wild. Narrow path through the forest, no light besides the flashlight, no idea about the surrounding and creatures living in there. The higher you go the more tricky it gets. With the volcanic soil and stones in a complete dark one wrong move ends up with hard landing. This walk is not always an 'easy peasy'. Our 2 companions from India, very nice couple that came to Bali for their honey moon, ended up taking the motorbike up from the mid-point of the hike. Well, Putu, our wonderful guide was taking good care of them but then at the end whispered to us "The guys from India always end up like this. 5 minutes of walking, 10 minutes of break". You wanna know what Miguel's answer was? "But I'm a natural".

Okay, there are difficult moment but trust our word, every step of the way is worth it when this sunrise awaits. The view at the top is just a moment of celebrating pure beauty of life and the world.

Then you get two slices of toast bread with banana that taste like gourme and boiled egg that occasionally gets stolen by the monkey.

The way back? The interesting thing about it is that this hike has a reversed effect. Usually the way up seems to take way more. Our brain and it's constant need of forecasting. But in this case coming back feels like it will last forever and it's probably a mix of tiredness, climbing up in complete darkness, having that goal of getting to the top fast enough not to miss a moment. Although it's very funny to walk down and see the path and realize that those scariest monsters on the way up were just leaves or tiny plants, onion crops and there are not many wild beasts waiting on the side to hunt.