Hiking the Cilengkrang Trail

On Thursday of this week, Ronnie hiked the Cilengkrang trail with a group of expats so I asked him to share that experience for the blog. I'll also include some photos that he took along the trail with his phone camera.


Ronnie:
At a dinner meeting of expats last weekend, I learned from a lady named Carol about an upcoming hike in the mountains around, or in the hills of Bandung. Rather than run, I decided to take the hike as my exercise for the day. We met at a local restaurant, where cars loaded with bule caravanned out to the remotely located home an expat from Holland. The drive took well over an hour and after a bathroom stop, we headed up to the entrance of Cilengkrang national park for a hike. Our arranged guide didn’t show up, so one of the locals lead us up the trail.


At first the hiking was easy and I thought Jan would have liked it, but soon we made several steep ascents up rocky slopes with a barely visible trail. We crossed the small stream flowing down the craggy gorge several times. Several of the women hikers began to fall behind and I realized there was no way we’d make it to the waterfalls in less than 4 hours. It should have been a two-hour hike, but the rough trail and slower members of the group made that an unreasonable goal.

before the going got tough

sun drying clothes drying on a roof

Carol on right

bamboo clothes lines

We hiked back down the trail we came up. Many people sat on their rears as they came down the steep slopes. Fortunately we made it back without any injuries and had a very late lunch at the home of our host.


It was a nice escape from the city noise, air pollution and general liter of Bandung. I hiked with an eclectic group of expats from France, Germany, Holland, UK, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, the USA and Texas. Conversation along the trail was a cornucopia of accents.