I left Bali with one goal: to witness the Kawah Ijen volcano hike in East Java. I had mapped out this leg of my solo travels across Java, Indonesia but I never expected to find myself inside the crater at 3AM, surrounded by fire, smoke, and sulfur miners hauling 100+ kilos on their backs like it was nothing.
This wasn’t just a hike. It was a night that pushed my body, rewired my fear, and made strangers feel like brothers.
(You can watch the full story unfold on YouTube and follow the behind the scenes journey on Instagram)The Crossing
Six hours on winding roads. Then a ferry no tourists, no noise, just the kind of silence that makes you pay attention. The moon was pinned above the ocean, and it felt like it was staring straight at me. A few locals struck up a conversation easygoing, curious, no small talk. That crossing set the tone. Solo travel in Java wasn’t going to be about places. It was already becoming something way more personal.On the bus to Easy JavaBanyuwangi: The Slow Landing
No Uber. No Grab. Just the kind of stillness that tells you real quick this place wasn’t built for tourists. I landed in Banyuwangi late. No reception desks. No maps. Just dim streets and the sound of a town minding its own business. I found this spot online Lintang Luku Tent Resort.It looked way too good to be real. A jungle sanctuary with waterfalls and tents? Come on. Still, I booked it. Somehow convinced a Grab driver to make the trip, even though technically, they’re not supposed to operate in that zone. The ride took over an hour through pitch-black jungle roads. No streetlights. No phone signal. Just the engine, the dark, and my second-guessing. When we arrived, I was hungry, worn out, and fully alone. But the staff? They welcomed me like I’d been gone, not like I’d just arrived. I ate. I exhaled. I crashed. And somewhere in the background, I could already hear the waterfall.Riding Through FearThe next day the staff handed me a bicycle, smiling like they were offering me freedom. What they didn’t know: I’ve had a fear of riding bikes for as long as I can remember. Doesn’t make sense on paper, but it’s always been there. Still, I smiled, nodded, and wheeled it out like it was nothing.Riding the bike with fearAt first, I walked beside it through narrow village paths, past wooden homes, chickens, and kids yelling “hello” from doorways. I kept thinking, just get on. I got lost. No map, no signs, just endless green and dirt tracks that forked and disappeared. A few villagers pointed me one way, then another. I wasn’t panicked just floating. Off-grid. Eventually, I gave in. Hopped on. Wobbled. Almost bailed. But I stayed up. And just like that, I was riding through the village past cloves drying in the sun, past curious stares, past that voice in my head that said I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t about the bike. It was about everything I didn’t even know I’d been carrying.Meeting Sur
Somewhere near the edge of the village, I saw a woman spreading something out on a tarp beside the road. I thought it was rice, drying under the sun. I started filming, curious. I asked her what it was. Before she could answer, a calm voice behind me said, “Cloves.”
That’s when I met Sur. He walked up with this quiet confidence observant, warm, no need to over explain anything. He pointed at the cloves, then at my camera, smiling like he already knew what I’d assumed.We talked a bit. His pace was unhurried, his tone light. Then I noticed a burn mark on his arm. I asked.“I had a tattoo from Bali,” he said. “I burned it off. I’m Muslim. I didn’t want it anymore.”That was it. No speech. No backstory. Just a clean decision — shared like it was just another part of the day.He rolled me a cigarette. I smoked, coughed like hell, and he laughed. Then he introduced me to a group of men sitting in the shade nearby — fingers stained yellow from rolling their own. They handed me another smoke. We sat there, laughing like old friends.In that laughter, something clicked. The ice broke. The village wasn’t watching me anymore it had pulled up a chair.Then Sur said, “Tonight. I will show you something no tourist ever sees.”And I knew this wasn’t just a village stop. This was the beginning of something bigger.
The Village
After meeting Sur and the group of miners, I kept wandering through the village no map, no destination. Just following where the road turned.
A woman chewing tobacco waved from her front step. She had this easy smile, like she’d been waiting for someone to talk to. We exchanged a few words her Bahasa, my broken attempts, both of us laughing in between. It didn’t matter what was said. It just mattered that it was shared.Further along, I watched a man climb a coconut tree like it was nothing. No gear. Just bare feet and rhythm. He was halfway up before I even realized what he was doing.Everyone I passed smiled. Some waved. No one looked surprised to see me just amused. Like they’d already accepted I was there, so I might as well be part of the day.I moved through narrow paths, between wooden houses and rice fields, cloves drying under the sun. Kids ran past barefoot. A goat tried to chew on my shoe.Everyone seemed to be smoking. It wasn’t just habit it was rhythm. I finally asked, and they told me: the smoke helps with their work in the sulfur mines. Helps with breathing, they said. I joined them, cigarette in hand, trying to understand. I didn’t know it yet, but I was being let into a rhythm I’d never seen before.Tamansari and the Woman Who Cooked
Sur gave me a location near the mines a place to stay deeper in. I packed up and left the resort behind. The road to Tamansari was a slow dive into jungle. Green wrapped around everything. My driver, Siggid, spoke about black panthers the way you’d mention potholes — casual, like they were just part of the neighborhood.
We pulled up to what looked like nothing: a roadside warung with a single room upstairs. No sign. No welcome mat. Just smoke in the air and the smell of wood and earth. That was home for the night.
I was starving. Downstairs, a woman ran the kitchen solo. No gloves. No recipes. Just hands that moved like they’d done this forever. She tore chicken apart with her fingers, stirred sambal with grace, wiped sweat with the back of her hand, and didn’t stop moving.
We barely spoke. We didn’t need to. I watched her work while my camera rolled. Not because it was “content,” but because it was real.
The food hit different. Not fancy. Not fast. Just something made by someone who’s lived a full life with grief, with joy, with repetition. It felt like nourishment in the truest sense. That room above her kitchen? It didn’t feel like a stopover. It felt like the start of something else.
Kalipait Falls Meeting Harris and Goat Man
I climbed a narrow lookout tower near the roadside restaurant just to get a view. That’s where I met Harris and his friend. “You’re alone?” he asked. I nodded. “Then tonight, we’re your friends,” he said simple, no hesitation.
They invited me into their car, and we drove no destination given, no questions asked. Just trust. First stop was Kalipait Waterfall. The moment we stepped out, the air changed.
The waterfall didn’t feel like a tourist spot. It felt wild. Unfiltered. The kind of place that doesn’t care who you are.
The smell hit first sharp, metallic. Then the sound a low hiss, like the earth itself was breathing through its teeth. The water looked thick, milky, like it carried secrets. You don’t touch it without thinking twice.
Then we drove again deeper. No signs. No other cars. We stopped at a room with four walls and nothing around it: a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere.
Inside, it was quiet. Just us and a few locals. We talked about coffee beans, roasting, soil. But really, it was about identity. They weren’t just making drinks. They were preserving something.
We drank slowly, like the silence mattered. Then they told me we were going higher to Kawah Wurung.
We climbed until the road disappeared and the grasslands took over. The air got thinner. The light changed. When we reached the top, it hit. Wide open land. Hills folding into each other. Trails cut by dirt bikes and time.
It felt like the end of the world and the beginning of one at the same time. No tourists. No signs. Just presence.
And there I was standing in the middle of Java with people I’d just met, feeling like I’d been let in on something sacred.
Fires at 2 AM
By 2AM, the jungle wasn’t asleep just quieter. The kind of quiet that hums under your skin.
I stepped outside into thick darkness. No streetlights. Just stars above, smoke below, and the glow of small fires scattered along the roadside. Miners were already gathering sitting in tight circles, crouched low, faces lit orange by the flames. They passed cigarettes between cracked fingers like it was part of some unspoken ritual.
One of them looked up at me mid drag and said, completely casually, “We see black panthers here. Almost every day.” He wasn’t trying to scare me. He said it like he was telling me what time the sun rises. Just… matter of fact.
That’s when I saw him. Sur. He didn’t recognize me at first I was in a cap, half shadowed by the firelight. I texted him. He looked up. I pulled the cap off. He smiled like something familiar had just clicked back into place.
“Let’s go,” he said.
No talk about what we were about to do. No gear check. No prep. Just boots on gravel.
And then we walked into darkness, into sulfur, into the mouth of a living volcano.
Into the Crater
The trail didn’t start it just happened. One minute we were on gravel, the next we were navigating jagged rock in near blackness. No signs. No railings. Just headlamps, instinct, and the crunch of boots against shifting ground.
Sur led the way like the volcano knew him. Cigarette in his mouth. Breath steady. Steps smooth. Like he’d done this a thousand times because he had. I followed, slipping here and there, my lungs already starting to protest.
Then we saw them the miners. Coming up from the depths like ghosts in the smoke. Each one carrying over 100 kilos of sulfur on bamboo frames across their shoulders. No harnesses. No gas masks. Just cloth over their mouths and raw strength in their bodies.
One miner paused next to me. He smiled through the smoke and said something I couldn’t catch. Sur translated: “He does this three times a night.”
I tried to lift one of their baskets. It crushed my shoulder in seconds. The pain was instant like the mountain itself was pressing down on me.
And yet they carry it. Every night. Every shift. Down into the crater. Up again. No safety gear. No health insurance. Just lungs full of poison and lives full of grit.
As we got deeper, the air changed. Thicker. Sharper. It burned to breathe. The crater began to glow gas and fire and stone mixing in a haze that felt almost alive. We weren’t just inside a volcano. We were inside something ancient. Something watching.
And we hadn’t even reached the bottom yet.
Singing in the Smoke
The crater wasn’t silent. It hissed. It pulsed. It warned.
Every breath burned more than the last. Sulfur wrapped around us like a living thing fog with claws. I pulled my mask tighter. Most of the miners didn’t have one. Just a thin cloth, stained from use, barely holding back the gas. And they still smiled.
One man passed me in the haze barefoot, carrying sulfur, singing. Not loud. Not for attention. Just… singing to himself. A slow, steady melody. Like the rhythm helped him carry the weight. I stopped him. “Can you sing again?” He smiled and nodded. Then he did same tune, same volume, like it was no big deal.
The sound cut through the poison like a lifeline. For a second, it made everything feel lighter. He looked like he was in his sixties. Sur said, “He’s 43.”
This place ages people in ways you can’t measure. Every inhale steals something. But somehow, none of them carry bitterness.
Some carve the sulfur into shapes animals, flowers, symbols and sell them for extra money. Others just load the raw slabs into their baskets and turn to climb again.
Sur pointed to a small wooden shack off to the side. “That’s where they wait when it rains,” he said. “If it’s too slippery, they fall.” Then he paused. “Some don’t get back up.”
And still… no one complains. No one plays the victim. There’s just laughter, hustle, and a kind of strength that doesn’t need to prove itself.
This isn’t just a job. It’s a way of life. And somehow even here, where the earth breathes fire it’s beautiful.
Getting down was tough. Getting back up? That was something else.
My legs were shaking within minutes. Every step felt like dragging my whole body uphill with sandbags strapped to my back. My lungs were shot. My clothes reeked of sulfur. I could feel it in my throat, in my teeth, in my brain.
Sur? Still smoking. Still calm. Still leading like this was a walk to the corner store. By now, he’d burned through almost an entire pack. Ten cigarettes… on one climb. And somehow, he was fine.
Ole and I struggled behind, slipping on loose rock, stopping every few steps just to breathe. We weren’t out of shape we were just out of context. This wasn’t our world.
Halfway up, Sur stopped at a ledge. One of the only places flat enough to pause without falling backwards. We all sat there, quiet, looking out over the crater. The mist was rising fast steam curling out of the mountain like it was exhaling. The whole scene looked like something between a wound and a miracle.
Sur didn’t say much. “This is just a normal day,” he told us. No pride. No complaint. Just fact.
And then it hit me. He had one day off. Just one. And he spent it bringing two strangers into the hardest part of his world.
We finally reached the top, legs screaming. There was a tiny coffee shack wooden benches, one kettle boiling. We sat in silence, sipping warmth, not needing to say a word.
For us, it was life-changing. For Sur, it was just another shift.
Banyuwangi and Goodbye
I thought the journey ended at the crater. I thought that was the peak — literally and metaphorically. But Java had one more thing to give.
Back at the guesthouse, I packed my bag. My body still carried the crater — the sulfur in my clothes, the weight in my legs. Jakarta was next. A train. A flight. Noise.
Then my phone lit up. Harris.
He wanted to drive me to the station but first, he said, “Let me show you my world.” No pitch. No pressure. Just an offer.
We rode through his side of Banyuwangi. He took me to his home. Introduced me to his family. Showed me his fishing boat paint chipped, proud, full of stories. We sat down to a simple meal. Laughed at nothing. Talked like we weren’t on a clock. It didn’t feel like a tourist being hosted. It felt like being claimed by a place.
At the station, the system made no sense. You could only buy a ticket minutes before departure. 7:35 was the magic number.
We waited. When the time came, we didn’t say much. No grand goodbye. Just a nod. A smile. I boarded. Found my seat. Watched the land blur past.
Java faded. Then Bali. Then the sky outside the plane window.
But I wasn’t the same person who’d left.
The miners they’re the strongest people I’ve ever met. Not because they carry sulfur. But because they carry life. Raw. Unfiltered. Real.
And I carry them now. In every step. Every breath. Every story I’ll tell from here.
This story is just one chapter. I’m on a mission to travel to every country in the world documenting it honestly, without filters or shortcuts. No teams. No scripts. Just me, a camera, and whatever the road brings.
If you felt something while reading this, there’s more. Follow the journey on YouTube, Instagram, or right here at expatsteps.com.
And if this story stayed with you share it. Someone else might need to feel it too.
It looked way too good to be real. A jungle sanctuary with waterfalls and tents? Come on.
