Early morning Durian delivery... Lombok is said to grow the finest Durians in Indonesia...!!
With shouts of farewell and good wishes ringing in my ears, the small crowd gathered around the bike parted before us and we were off to cross Lombok…
"See...!! His panniers are bigger than yours... No more complaining...!!"
The first thing I noticed in the early dawn as we made our way north towards Mataram, Lombok’s largest town, were the endless fields of maize that grew there…
I had become so used to the rice paddies of Bali, that the sight of them held my attention for a long time… Now and again, I came across fields of tobacco as well…
The road running north was virtually empty, with just a few delivery scooters and early morning market go-ers out and about…
A short distance north of Gerung, we turned east towards Kediri and then north again to Sweta, the third large town which lies due east of Mataram in a long unbroken line of habitation that stretches all the way from the coast, inland…
Heading for the harbour of Kayangan on the eastern shores of Lombok...
The next thing I noted, was that the streets and verges of the roads were far tidier and cleaner than those in Bali… Another sign that Lombok had not yet been overrun by tourists and the locals desire to stuff more goods in plastic bags for these tourists…!!
Sidewalks were being swept by children making ready to leave for school, mothers and fathers were shouting greeting to their neighbours… The sight of the Big Fella roaring past them, stopping many in mid-sentence, mouths agape…!!
And roaring was exactly what we were doing…!!
Having decided to head for Kayangan to get across to Sumbawa as quickly as possible, I was shaking the lead out while the roads were slowly filling up with early morning traffic…
Lombok is a predominantly Muslim island, and I was told by one of the truckers in Lembar, that it was famous because it had over a thousand Mosques…!! I am not sure how true this is, but I can tell you that I passed a few hundred of them on my way to the west coast of the island…!! There seemed to be a mosque (or “moss-key” as they pronounced them here…!!) every few hundred metres, most of them small and unassuming, but a few quite large with all the usual ornate minarets and shiny domes…
Dawn breaks over Lombok's extensive maize fields...
With the bike now beginning to feel lighter under me, I settled back to watch the early morning landscape slide by… The light this early in the morning did not make for many decent photographs of what I saw there… For the most part I just watched the sun working its way up across a cloudy sky, occasionally bursting through a break in them to bathe the countryside in dappled rays…
The Rinjani Volcano can be seen from all over the island...
Gunung Rinjani dominated the view to the north, as we rode directly into the rising sun… Somewhere between Kopang and Terara, a large speckled rooster dashed out of the undergrowth on the roadside, directly in front of the Big Fella… Suffice to say that there will be one less crowing cock on Lombok in future…!! For the next few kilometres, feathers disengaged themselves from the front end of the bike and floated away on the wind…
Next to Rinjani, I noticed a smaller volcano that had smoke drifting directly skyward from its crown… I wondered if this was a brush fire on its upper slopes, or if there was something more sinister afoot…!!
Waiting for the trucks to come off the ferry at Kayangan...
At Pringgabaya, we turned north again and a short while later entered Labuhan Lombok, the port town on the eastern coast of the island, and the jumping off point for Sumbawa…
As in Bali, road signage here is kept to the absolute minimum, and it took me a while to find the road that heads out of town towards the ferry terminal at Kayangan…
I paid the Rp 81 000 (R70.00) for the two hour trip across the Alas Strait to Sumbawa, and then idled down to the small group of kiosks that were selling food and drink to passengers waiting to board the ferry…
A small crowd gathered around us, and shouts of “Swastiastu…!!” (Welcome…!!), greeted us as I hopped off the Big Fella and took a few swigs from my water bottle…
“Where are you going…??”, “Where have you come from…??” asked the group…
“Ubud in Bali…!!” I said grinning, “I left there just before midnight…!!”
Their looks of disbelief made me laugh out loud…
“How long in Lombok…??” one of them asked…
“About two and a half hours all in all…!!” I replied, watching the ferry dock behind him…
I stood watching truck loaded with bags of rice and others fully loaded with small bunches of red onions, coming up the concrete jetty and heading away to the sleepy town of Labuhan Lombok in the distance…
It had taken me just ninety minutes to ride clear across the island, and by 8.15am, we were on the ferry and casting off for Sumbawa…
I would have liked to explore Lombok further, perhaps spend a few days checking out some of the smaller villages on the slopes of the volcano, or riding around its northern perimeter… Lombok is well known for its many streams and waterfalls that pour off the slopes of its volcanoes, and it is said that each time you swim behind the Tiu Kelap Waterfall, you become a year younger… I could have done with more than a few dips there, myself…!!
Away from the main roads, villagers live a simple life here, content with their homes of bamboo and thatch, subsisting on the crops they plant… Towards the eastern parts, less maize and more rice paddies were evident, and I also saw fields of cabbage and tomatoes growing there…
Lombok struck me as a tranquil place, where life is lived at a slower pace than that in Bali, and long walks in pretty countryside would be the order of the day…
But walking was the furtherest thing from my mind right then…
Tied down for the second time in the space of a few hours... Same day, another ferry...!!
This was the only lifeboat on the ferry...!! "Just enough place for the Big Fella and I...!!" I thought to myself... On this ferry, it was "every man and his bike for himself"...!!
I was asked to ride up into the ferry before any other vehicles, as the captain wanted to be sure that I could lash the bike down safely… He had wandered over to chat to me while his ferry was being made ready for the return trip to Sumbawa…
In a small alcove under the stairs, we tied the Big Fella down and then had our photos taken by a large group of crew and other passengers…
I hung around below, watching the cars , trucks and scooters being directed to their places by the crew… I wanted to be sure that none of them were parked too close to the bike…
This Lou Diamond lookalike kept us entertained during the short voyage...
Vendors carted these boxes of snacks around every few minutes...
On the upper deck, the only one on this small ferry, I settled down on a bench, and before long was being entertained by a young man and his kid brother… While the older strummed his guitar, the younger one joined in to sing from time to time…
Afterward, they walked among the passengers with a black plastic bag held out to receive “offerings”… I noticed that some folk placed little packets of peanuts and other snacks in the bag, while very few dropped any money into it… I gave the guy Rp 20 000, about R15, and said “Super Bagus…!!” (Very good…!!), and received a huge smile and a nod of thanks in return…
Personally, I preferred some of this...!!
My “generosity” had not gone unnoticed, and from then on, everybody around me smiled broadly at me whenever our eyes met…
I gazed out to sea, and could see Sumbawa far off in the distance, across the Azure waters around us…
I began psyching myself up for a long hard ride across its barren landscapes, calculating time and distance in my mind, recalling information that I had gathered from the truckers in Lembar, and the few crew members on the ferry that spoke a smattering of English…
I figured that if I could be on the road by 10.00am, I might just make it all the way across the other side, a 400 km ride…
This was my first day back in the saddle after a rather long lay-off, and I was pumped up and ready to chew up as many kilometres as I could…
No gentle re-entries for the Gypsy Biker…!!
The next nine hours would confirm that in more ways than one…!!
We passed many uninhabited islands on the way into the bay at Poto Tano on Sumbawa... We waited while the ferry ahead of us left on its run to Lombok before our skipper heading for the jetty...
©GBWT 2011
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