Mount Ijen home of Blue Flames and Unique Sunrise

Ijen: Blue Flame Marvel 

I was in Banyuwangi during first week of December 2018. This small sea side town is a part of East Java in Indonesia. In fact , Bali is only ten to fifteen minutes boat ride from here. 

Many Indian know about Bali which is Indonesian State  predominated by Hindus and you can find footprints of rich Hindu culture every where. Though Bali is now a republic state, the royal family is seen as custodian of the Hindu faith and is widely respected.  Prince Tjokorda Raka is  head of culture and religion in Ubud. And by the way for we Indians over the years, Bali has become hot spot for destination marriages and honey nooners. 

But to be very honest Banyuwangi is equally beautiful but less explored. Our hosts in Banyuwangi were from the local university. They insisted us to visit Mount Ijen , according to them it  is an experience of its own kind. We decided to explore. 

The friends from University arranged  for the vehicles to take us to our destination, our group  started our journey from Ketapang resort around 12 in the night. It was dark so we could not enjoy the landscapes on way to Ijen.  The distance is around 30 km and the drive was pretty cool , it took us an hour. From the road end,  we had to trek to the spot where the real action was. We were told to use mask in the volocanic area. We started on the trail path we were around 1:30 am.

The height of Ijen Mount is roughly 2.800 meter above sea level it is a live volocano. We reached the crater within about an hour and then further  45 minutes going up and down to reach the nature’s miracle blue flame. 

Lo voila ! finally we made it. We headed down to watch blue flame illuminating the dark area, it is due to the huge cloud of sulfur gas pouring out of from the surface. The combustion of the sulfuric gases creates a blue glow, which has become famous as the ‘blue flame of Ijen Crater’. This is an active volcano afterall and you never know when something unpredictable may happen. Our mask came handy to protect us from the fumes of sulphuric gaseous emission 

As time stood still , we stayed there for almost two hours busy in clicking the pics and enjoying celestial blue flame drama. It was then about 3:30 am. We have to cover the final leg of our trek to the enjoy sunrise, which took about half an hour. Sunrise was only half an hour away , we were enjoying talking sitting comfortably at the summit  cold like Delhi’s December nights but not freezing. Now the colors starting to unfolding through. When the sun rises, gazing  upon the vivid, turquoise crater lake was also very unique experience. Few interesting facts about this crater lake : The turquoise lake in the crater of this Kawah Ijen volcano looks serene and inviting. But it happens to be the world's largest acidic lake. The water in the crater lake has a pH less than 0.3 on a scale of 0 to 14 (7 is neutral).  For us as photographers that was perfect because we prefer to be thirty minutes early than thirty minutes late.

We had no hurry as our Banyuwangi City tour was scheduled after 10. Plenty pictures, plenty laughter  and sharing our own stories. It was 7 morning and time to go back.