Iqbal Dwiharianto: Merbabu : A Short Story of A Beginner

Having a holiday was never this ‘exhausting’. It was all started when a friend of mine, Linda, informed me that she was about to make a 2 days trip to Merbabu mountain in Central Java. Without taking any longer, saying ‘yes, I come’ was all I wanted to do once I heard the invitation came into these ears.

The date was set, we decided to go on 21st of Feb 2015. I forced my self to go back to Yogyakarta from Tasikmalaya earlier than what I already scheduled previously. It doesn’t matter anyway, i’ll spend the rest of this holiday on such of fun trip, I thought.

Long story short, the d-day finally came. Since it was my first time to go hiking, I was sort of too enthusiastic in preparing the stuffs that I should carry on within the trip. Eventually, I spent around Rp.500.000 in total to cover all the things I needed. I know...I supposed to just rent them, what a dull!

We went there via Selo, Magelang (recommended track). It was around 2,5 hours from Yogyakarta by motorbike until we finally arrived at the base camp at 17.00 WIB to have meals, final check preparation, and registration procedure. I barely forgot how much the cost of registration was, but pretty sure it was less than Rp.15.000.

views from the base camp.
(pict. idh)

For some reasons, we decided to start walking at 20.00 WIB. Fortunately, even it was completely dark, but It wasn’t raining at all. As it was my first experience in hiking, what I expected about the track was, frankly speaking, easy and solid. But totally, it wasn’t!

Although the track wasn’t (not even close) like what I imagined, the trip was totally fun! It took 6 hours (cause we took so many breaks) from the base camp to reach the camping ground which was located around 2500 mdpl (maybe). Since the trip was dominated by the newbies just like me, we decided to build the tent in the camping ground at 02.00 WIB and we would continue walking by tomorrow morning.

Apparently, the super cold air and leg injury that I had right before reaching the camping ground forced me not to continue the trip to the peak at the next morning. I decided to wait and going around to the hills in the surrounding area behind the camp as some of my friends continue the trip up to the peak.