“I come with the rain,” I muttered to myself while I watched the last sheen of daylight give way to dark clouds, casting over the countryside and heading to Bandung. I spent the three-hour train ride from Jakarta uneventfully fighting off sleep as I opted to stare at the passing lush scenery as much as I could.
Bandung, Indonesia | Tracking Nature Prints of Volcanoes and Heritage Trails
Worn out from my daylong journey from Manila, the thought of feasting over Sambal-spiced Indonesian cuisine left me salivating heavily. A downpour greeted me as I alighted out of the train. Fortunately, I stepped right out of the station into an empty taxi cab that took me to my hotel, where I quickly crashed into my bed.
Like a corpse that came back to life, I awoke the next morning having nary a dream and lying in the exact position I slept on: right cheek down and arms outstretched on the bed. A luster of morning light peeking from the sides of my room’s curtain revealed bright, sunny weather. A stark contrast from yesterday’s glumness. Jolted to full awareness, I hurriedly prepared and penciled out the Caldera of Kawah Ratu as my first destination to visit in Bandung.
Caldera of Kawah Ratu
Situated an hour and a half from the city center of Bandung, Mount Tangkuban Perahu was an active volcano that erupted in 2013. Its main caldera was referred to as the “Queen’s crater” or Kawah Ratu, the biggest among the volcano’s three craters.
A fenced viewpoint stretching a few hundred meters edged the other side of Kawah Ratu. Walking to find a better angle to view the caldera, I noticed steam billowing from various holes in the ground. Overheard from a tour guide, the rising steam actually emitted poisonous sulfurous gases, which could render one unconscious if one happened to stand within its thirty-meter radius.
I spent a couple of hours just staring at that beautiful anomaly of nature: a hodgepodge of boiling underground streams, along with the peculiar sludge of soil and boulders resulting in a desolate yet stunning landscape.
Feeling chilly from the February wind, I started walking down toward the beat-up van I had rented that was parked at the gate of the national park. The driver said, “You more than one hour” the moment he saw me. I got worried that he would charge me more, but then he added, “I know, you enjoyed it. Really beautiful, huh?” before giving me a thumbs-up. “Yes, indeed, it is pretty,” I said.
Kawah Putih Crater Lake
The next day, I journeyed to the village of Ciwidey. Situated almost forty kilometers from Bandung, it was known for the Kawah Putih or the White Crater Lake. After alighting at Ciwidey town from a cramped angkot, a van converted into public transport, I hired a motorbike rider to take me to Kawah Putih Park.
For half an hour, we snaked our way through the zigzag roads passing by strawberry and tea plantations, rice terraces, and a mossy forest. Similar to our own Mount Pinatubo, Kawah Putih Crater Lake was formed after a series of volcanic eruptions. There one could find a beautiful trick of nature that shaped another otherworldly bright turquoise lake that gleamed in a blinding white color under the sun.
With an acidity level of 0.5–1.3, it was so unsafe that one could not even dip their toes into the crater’s lake. Unaware of that fact, the smell of billowing sulfur warned me to keep my distance from the water, no matter how mystifying it appeared.
What made Kawah Putih look more spectacular was the way it contrasted peculiarly with the black, naked tree branches protruding from the soil. The forest-covered cliffs surrounding the lake and the bubbling steam of sulfurous gas created a setting torn from the pages of a Stephen King novel. If one canceled out the sight of selfie-stick-wielding tourists, they would feel its unearthly ambiance chill their bones.
A Heritage Walk along Braga Street
After back-to-back days of tracking eruption points of volcanoes, I spent the next day indulging in awe of the architecture of heritage buildings along Braga Street in downtown Bandung. A popular promenade street during the 1920s, the modern-day Braga Street still carried the character of postwar architecture, influenced heavily by the Art Deco movement.
A prominent architect of that period, Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker, known as the Frank Lloyd Wright of Indonesia, designed numerous buildings in Bandung, including my favorite building—the Concordia Cinema—that still stood and was beautifully preserved.
I started my stroll at the imposing 1920s Gedung Merdeka, also in Art Deco style, and continued my way toward the corners of several streets parallel to Braga.
Bandung’s prewar buildings did not only exist along Braga Street, as they stretched beyond other alleys and roads. I must have taken more than 15,000 steps that afternoon as I stayed hot on the trail of Bandung’s heritage architecture.
It was after sunset when I realized I was already driving my feet to soreness that I decided to drop by a small café housed inside an old building. Surrounded by paint-peeled walls and seated on an antique wooden chair, I sipped my hot cup of coffee and regaled at the whole experience. As my toes throbbed in pain, I also felt my spirit and quest for wonder filling to the cusp quickly, thanks to my pursuit of Bandung’s volcano prints and heritage trails.
