Merlijn Series 02: Kawah Putih
Merlijn Series 02: An experience to never forget in Kawah Putih Bandung, Indonesia.
Hello everybody, I am Merlijn Olde Riekerink, an intern at the International Office of Telkom University. I come from the Netherlands where I study International Business and Management at Saxion University in Enschede. During my time here I want to visit the most amazing places and see all the wonderful things Indonesia has to offer. My first wish was to go to Kawah Putih. We had seen pictures of what it would look like so we decided that we wanted to see it with our own eyes. The Netherlands is home to zero mountains and volcanoes so you won’t find a natural phenomenon like this where I come from. Coming here provides us with endless opportunities to see things we have never seen before.
On August 30, 2018, a thursday afternoon, my friends and I got on our scooters and travelled to Kawah Putih. Doing this by scooter is quite a lot of fun. You drive through small towns and on mountain roads where you get a good view of the rice fields and valleys located in the mountains. After driving for roughly two hours and having to search for our house for a little while we finally arrived at our Airbnb for the night. The house was located roughly 10 minutes away from Kawah Putih itself with an amazing view on the village and the mountains. This day we went to the supermarket, went out for dinner and played games in our house.
Since the house was located so close, we got there really fast, parked our scooters, bought tickets and made our way to the shuttle bus that was going to take us up the mountain. After waiting for a little while for more people to arrive we went up the mountain. This little trip(roughly 15 minutes) itself is already quite the adventure and definitely a lot of fun.
Once we arrived at the top of the mountain, we quickly made our way into the crater. The sun was shining and it looked absolutely amazing. The blue water and yellow-green sand is something you do not see every day. We walked along the sides of the lake and made dozens of pictures and videos. It is said that the smell of the lake is bad, however, we found it to be pretty oke. Some parts were better than others, but overall still doable.
After wandering around the lake for some time, we noticed there was a little look-out post in the forest around the lake. We got our stuff and went up the stairs towards this post. It was made of bamboo and provided you with a fantastic view over the lake. Having again made dozens of pictures we went back to our shuttle bus to go down the mountain back to our scooters. This trip went a little faster as you go down the mountain instead of up. Being dropped off at a little ‘’village’’ were we parked our scooters we looked around for a little bit before grabbing our scooters and heading back to Telkom University.
This was a memorable trip and I highly advise everyone who has the time to go here. Never before have I seen such blue water and especially no green sand. At least not 100% natural. Me and my friends had a great time and we hope more people can share this experience!
