Indonesia - Catching The Sunrise At Mount Sikunir

Hello there!

Having completed my earlier travel posts on Japan (Tokyo, Osaka and Hokkaido) and Maldives, in my previous posts, we have moved the journey of our exploration to Indonesia, and covered mostly about Bali. You can find the posts here:

In my previous posts, I shared the magic of Bali's beaches and temples.
Indonesia - Capturing The Magic Of Bali’s Beaches
Indonesia - A Trip To Taman Ayun Temple In Bali
Indonesia - Watching The Sunset At Tanah Lot

Then we moved on to another place in Indonesia, and that's Yogyakarta! Yogyakarta is a very interesting city because there are a lot of heritage stuff within the city.
Indonesia - Discovering Borobudur, The World's Largest Buddhist Temple
Indonesia - Discovering Prambanan, Where History Lives
Indonesia - Descending Into Jomblang Cave For An Adventure!
Indonesia - Visiting Mount Merapi, The Most Dangerous Active Volcano In Indonesia

As I went through the photos, there's really a whole lot of interesting stuff to do in Yogyakarta! So let's continue our journey!

One of the highlights of my Yogyakarta trip (talk about saving the best for the last, well, almost the last!) was catching the sunrise at Mount Sikunir. It was extremely memorable because not only the sunrise was beautiful, we had to brave the cold (by Indonesia's standards) and we also had to wake up as early as 0400h in the morning to make our way up.

So we started the day before, we booked a local transport to fetch us to a place called the Dieng Plateau, which was near to Mount Sikunir. It was some distance away from the city of Yogyakarta and we reached there around 1700h in the evening.

What surprised me when I stepped out to the surroundings was it was pretty chilly by Indonesia's standards. I had thought that the temperatures for Indonesia would be around 20+ degrees Celsius but the temperature was in the 10s range. And I was wearing bermudas! I thought I will probably try to survive this trip till the end.

We walked around the surroundings and snapped some photos. It was quite a peaceful area with a lot of farming activities.

Interestingly, there were also temples in the area and it's probably one of the only "attraction" there for visitors to take photos. Of course, most visitors were there to catch the sunrise the next morning as well.

We continued to walk a bit in the area to explore, I think one thing that struck me would be the amount of greenery and nature in this area. It's not something that I get to experience given that I live in a city and there are no big mountains as well.

Not sure where these Teletubbies came from... But many people were crowding over to take photos with them. Haha.

As the sky darkened, we made our way to our homestay, which was actually a very simple home of a local. There were no hotels in this area, so that's probably the best we can get. I shared this bed with my friend, a little squeezy, but I guess for one night of sleep it was okay. Anyway, we had to wake up very early the next morning as well.

Rise and shine! We woke up at around 0400h, had a simple breakfast and headed out. There was some distance to drive to get to the foot of the mountain. Thereafter, we started hiking our way up. And to me, that was really the scary part.

As you probably could tell, it was extremely dark because the sun has not risen yet. So we could only rely on torches and our handphone lights to find our way up. Thinking back, it was actually quite dangerous as well because there were some areas that the path was very narrow and if one were to slip to the side, it would be all the way down the mountain. So I was really, really careful and taking very small steps up, armed with just the light from the handphone.

And we reached the top or the viewing point. Time check was 0544h! It was about half an hour's worth of hike, which was actually still manageable given that the weather was very cooling. Speaking of the weather, it was extremely chilly at the top! The temperature was like 9 degrees Celsius. In Indonesia!? Fortunately, my friend had extra clothing and I just put on more layers to try and survive.

Time check: 0551h! While we were busy snapping photos, our local guide was really nice and he bought two warm cups of ginger tea for my friend and myself. In the chilly weather, a warm drink was really amazing and the ginger tea immediately warmed my body up. The big question is, how did the locals actually push their carts up the mountain to sell ginger tea there? o.O

Time check: 0603h! I was busy snapping photos because the scenery changes every minute as the sun gradually started to light up the Earth.

Time check: 0608h! It was actually very crowded at the viewing point, and thankfully we were early and were able to secure a good viewing spot! Credit to our local guide for the planning and getting us to wake up early!

Time check: 0618h!

As we started to get a little restless, I turned to the side to snap another view as well. The clouds were so pretty.

And with light, we could finally see how we hiked our way up at 0500h! It's pretty high right? Amazing how we did it in pitch darkness!

Time check: 0628h! The sun came out! I remembered many people exclaimed in joy and delight. It's not everyday we get to see such amazing scenery and sunrise after all.

Time check: 0629h! Just 1 minute difference, and the sun moved!

Time check: 0630h!

Time check: 0637h! And there you have it, the sun all big and shining in the sky to kickstart another day!

All in all, thinking back, it was really adventurous of me to do a hike up the mountain at 0500h in the morning in the pitch darkness, but the view and sunrise experience was definitely worth all of the effort! So this was really one of the biggest highlights of my Yogyakarta trip!

So that's all I have today! Have you been to Mount Sikunir before? Let me know in the comments below!

Finally, thanks for reading my post in the community under World Map Pin!