Day twenty-six
I wake at 12:30 – just after midnight. I don’t do Wordle because there’s still no wifi in my tiny, wooden, garden cabin. I use the bathroom, then fall back into a dreamy sleep, comfortable and enjoying a few hours of un-stressed time. It feels like a luxury to be able to doze like this, even though it’s the middle of the night.
My alarm goes off at 4:30 am and I reluctantly crawl out of bed, make a cup of tea, and slowly pack my bike. I wander down to the restaurant, perched out over the river in three layers on rickety decks. Right now, it’s pitch dark. Below me I can hear the water rushing past – the river that had rafts floating down it yesterday afternoon with Indonesian tourists having the time of their lives.
I wouldn’t go into that river by choice – the rubbish in there and the run-off from drains makes my stomach turn. You can tell a lot about a country by the state of its rivers, and here they look sad, polluted and grey. I help myself to some yoghurt and muesli from the fridge in the bar, as arranged last night. I hoped there would be a pre-prepared bowl with my name on it, but there isn’t.
By 5:15 am I’m pulling out on my bike. I glance down the track towards the restaurant one last time and spot one of the members of staff – an older guy wearing a red t-shirt. I wave and call out Goodbye. He says something back in Indonesian, so I ride up the bumpy track to the main road and turn left into the morning traffic.
Just a few hundred metres later, the guy in the red t-shirt catches me up on a motor-scooter. He waves and pulls me over. When I’ve stopped by the side of the road, he hands me a plastic bag with a tub of fruit, yoghurt and muesli. I try to explain that I’ve already eaten, but lack of language on both our parts gets in the way, so I thank him, take the tub, and tuck it into my panniers for later.
My route takes me back out past Borobudur temple, and I think of all the people up there, watching the sun rise through the thick layers of smog. The pollution seems worse than usual this morning – the sun a ball of orange long after it’s risen.
I take the back road towards Wonosobo, a road that is full of steep ups and downs, and I soon get tired of changing down into first gear for every steep pinch. My legs quickly tire too. My stomach still isn’t right and my muscles are probably low on fuel.
The road winds through rice paddies, scrappy forest and little towns. Even though we’re climbing, the air quality doesn’t improve at all, with anything beyond the first couple of ridges disappearing into haze.
I’m passed by trucks belching out exhaust fumes, and I pass rubbish fires, stubble fires in crop fields, and timber yards processing tree-trunks, spewing out great plumes of smoke as they burn off the waste. This place could be so beautiful. Imagine sunrise at Borobudur and Prambanan with clear skies and views across to the volcanos. Imagine the forest without the haze. Imagine being able to see the stars.
Two hours in, I stop at a roadside shelter to eat my second breakfast of fruit and yoghurt. I programme my navigation to a place marked as tea gardens which look like a great place to stop before I have to decide if I head north up to the volcanic plateau, with a 1500 metre climb, or continue west towards Jakarta.
I ride through more towns, past more rice paddies. In one town, I pass the town domain where a group of middle-aged women, all wearing red and white are doing an exercise class. I stop and watch for a while, as they stretch sideways, wondering if I could join in, but I don’t. It’s gentle exercise – not quite Tai Chi but something close. They breathe in, reaching for the sky, and I breath in too. Then they breathe out, and I can feel my shoulders relax as I follow their cue.
I’m at the tea gardens by 8 am, and I pull off the road. There’s nobody at the ticket desk, the only people around are a group of three guys busy sweeping up leaves from the paths, preparing for opening, whenever that is.
I let myself through the entrance, and park my bike next to a wooden picnic bench. The guys look at me, puzzled, but nobody comes over to tell me to leave, so I leave my bike alone, and walk up the hill amongst the tea plants. I’ve never seen tea growing before. The neatly trimmed shrubs have large gloss green leaves. I tear off a corner of a leaf, and sniff it. But nothing about it smells of tea, not even like green tea. But it’s nice there – peaceful away from the traffic – and I spend a contended half hour, wandering though the plantation, with the place to myself.
After some more snacks, and plenty of photographs I return to my bike and we push on.
It’s not far down the road until we get to the junction where I have to decide if I go up to the plateau or not. I dither. I make a decision to go one way, then I change my mind, then I start pedalling uphill, then I tell myself not to be stupid – I’m still recovering from food poisoning, I’m tired – so I turn around again and head west towards Jakarta.
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