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August 17th, 2011 | Asia

The Long Haul to Bima… Part 1.

If someone had told me that I would get from Ubud in Bali, to Bima in Sumbawa, in the space of twenty hours, I would have smiled sweetly at them while wondering why they had stopped taking their prescribed medicines…

Then again, if I’d have known that this is what I would have to do on my first day back on the road, I would have been scouting around for some medication of my own…!!

Joining the queque at Padandbai Harbour...

All in all, I ended up spending six hours on two separate ferries; an hour waiting for the sun to come up in Lombok; and eleven hours in the saddle, covering about 550 km, riding from Ubud to Padangbai; then clear across Lombok Island; and finally, a nine hour slog to the far eastern side of Sumbawa Island itself…!!

At the end of the day, safe and feeling rather unsound in my hotel room in Bima, I looked in the mirror and repeated that old and classic phrase, “I am well knackered…!!”

My “night and day ride” was almost over before it even began, when I nearly clipped the top step of the steep path that led into the sleeping village of Penastanan…!! I was still trying to find the perfect balance on a bike that was 100 kgs heavier than I had been used to riding over the past ten weeks, and had just shifted my weight in the saddle when the almost 45 degree path rose up to meet us… The concrete path is barely a metre wide on this slope, and runs next to a flight of stairs for pedestrian traffic…

Not something I would suggest attempting in the pitch dark with 360 kgs of bike and gear under you…!!

For the most part, the road to Padangbai was slick and wet, but thankfully almost deserted at 11.00 pm… That was more than I can say for the main road that ran through the centre of Ubud…!! Crowds still thronged the sidewalks at this late hour, the many restaurants lining the street, filled to capacity…

Indonesian flags fluttered from every lamppost and flagpole I passed, and I was reminded that in less than an hour, 260 million Indonesians would be celebrating Independence Day…!!

It took me awhile to adjust to the heavily loaded bike again… It seemed to “wallow” through the corners, felt heavier on one side than the other, and of course, the braking distance had become a few metres longer… Something I almost discovered “by accident”, when I came to my first full stop at the traffic lights entering Gianyar…!!

With Enigma’s “Voyageur” album blasting through my earphones, I turned north onto the only double-lane highway in Bali, settled into the centre, and gave the throttle a healthy twist…

We zoomed through the night, my spotlights lighting up the empty road ahead, and forty-five minutes later, I was handing over the princely sum of 232 000 Rupiah (just R190.00…!!) for the privilege of boarding the midnight ferry to Lombok…!!

“Midnight”, being a relative term, as the ferry only slipped it’s moorings and headed out to sea closer to 1.00am than midnight…!!

All lashed down for the voyage to Lombok...

I found an empty bench at the very front of the lounge and covered the entire space I was not sitting at with my jacket and helmet so that I could try and catch a few winks later, then stood out on the walkway nearby and watched as the lights of Bali disappeared into the inky darkness…

I raised my hand in a final farewell to the Island and its people, and to one in particular, who would now forever hold a place in my heart, and then went back to my bench to read up on Lombok and Sumbawa…

I could not decide whether or not to take the long route around the northern reaches of Lombok, skirting the massive Rinjani Volcano, or cut directly across the island and take a stab at a bigger bite of Sunbawa…

Ride around the Rinjani Volcano, or cut straight across...?? Decisions, decisions...!!

I knew that on the 24th of August, I had to take the fortnightly ferry from Flores to Kupang on the western side of Indonesian Timor, and that if I missed that ferry, I would lose two weeks of my ride through Australia…

I began counting the days from there backwards, trying to work out where I should be, and when…

I decided to err on the side of caution now rather than later, and opted for a quick dash across Lombok, rather than take the scenic route…

All around me had gone to sleep by the time I completed my deliberations… People were sprawled out in the passages, babies lay under the benches, and moving around without stepping on somebody became a difficult task…

Try as I might, I could not bring myself to sleep, my plans for the day ahead of me flashing through my mind… I went below to the car deck to check on the Big Fella, as I had left both my video cameras in their brackets on the bike…

In Europe, once you left the car deck of a ferry to go onto the upper levels, you were never allowed back until the ferry had docked… Here in the Third World, no such rule applied, and people were free to roam wherever they chose during the voyage…!! For this reason I always made a point of checking on the bike to ensure that it was not being tampered with, by both the well-meaning, and the long-fingered…!!

Waiting for the sun to rise in Lembar Harbour...

We reached the port of Lembar on the southern foot of Lombok at 5.00am, and disembarked in complete darkness…

I was last off the ferry, as I insisted that my bike be tied down properly, and the only available space had been in a small gap in the wall of the hull, which was blocked off when all the cars and trucks came on board a short while later…

It meant that I had to wait until almost all the vehicles were off before I could begin untying the ropes that the Big Fella had been lashed down with…

Just outside the harbour entrance, I stopped in a small parking area to wait for sunrise… I sat down at a small Warung, ordered the first of three cups of coffee and settled down to watch the goings-on around me… Before long, the bike and I were surrounded by people who wanted to know everything there was to know about us…!!

I befriended the owner of the Warung, who pulled up a chair next to mine and began telling me the little he seemed to know about Lombok…

“Lombok is as Bali was ten years ago…” he said… “But things are changing quickly now…!! More and more tourists are coming here, because Bali is too crowded…!!”

I knew that he was correct in his estimations, because I had heard the same thing from a number of other people… Bali had developed too quickly, especially in the south western area of the island… There were now too many cars and not enough roads, which made getting around a nightmare…!! And speaking of roads, many of them were far too narrow to allow cars to pass each other at anything more than a walking pace, which made matters even worse…!!

Just before dawn, truck drivers gathered to see us off...

Efforts were being made to draw tourist away from the southern beaches, by developing the northern parts of the island near Singaraja and Lovina, but developers did not seem too eager to pour their money into an area that did not have as many of the typical white sand beaches of the south… There were even plans to build an international airport in the north, and I hoped that the road networks up there would be widened to cope with the influx of vehicles…!!

To avoid the congestion and crowded conditions in Bali, tourists had begun turning to Lombok instead… It has as many beautiful beaches and surfing areas as Bali, its dive sites are becoming recognized as some of the most pristine in the northern parts of the Indian Ocean… And it has its own “Agung” in the shape of the much more impressive Rinjani Volcano, where two and even five day hikes are possible, and the views even more spectacular…!!

I waited for the sun to come up through the clouds so that I could see what else Lombok had to offer…

A perfect start to the day...!!

©GBWT 2011

1 comment to The Long Haul to Bima… Part 1.

  • Mark Behr

    Big start to a renewed journey. Sometimes keeping busy is the trick as your mind adjusts to moments of sadness and hope for the future. Go well!

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