Ubud, Bali: Climbing Mount Batur for sunrise

I’d say that our sunrise hike up Mount Batur was the first big challenge of my travels since leaving England – and probably my favourite thing I've done in Bali so far!

Watching the sunrise from Mount Batur

The lovely couple who owned our homestay (Indy’s Place) were able to get us a good deal on this whole trip to the volcano because it turned out that Indy knew one of the men who ran the sunrise trekking company. So, that evening (before we had a chance to change our minds!), we set our alarms to wake up in the middle of the night, took a coach for a couple of hours to the volcano and were all ready to begin the hike at about 3am.

Our small group ended up climbing Mount Batur in the dark for somewhere between 2 and 3 hours. It was actually a lot tougher than it sounds because not only was it pitch black outside but it was also an extremely rocky, crumbly uphill path, which meant that everyone in our group was constantly losing their footing and occasionally falling like dominoes! I definitely tripped up a few times and one girl in our group even had to stop halfway up and have a cry.

But despite all of that, the experience was completely worth it because the views from the top were unbelievable.

Sunrise view from the top of Mount Batur

We felt pretty lucky to see what we did at the top of the volcano as one of the guides told us that the group who did the trek the day before us had their view blocked by a giant cloud.

On this much clearer day, the sun came out and lit up all of the mountains and valleys around us, turning everything pink and gold.

There were also quite a few monkeys up at the top of the volcano, who we fed our leftover breakfast bananas to!

A monkey at the top of Mount Batur

The journey back down wasn’t much easier than the uphill trek, because the route was just as steep and unstable, but at least we had sunlight on our side this time!

Enjoying the views before making the journey back down

We arrived back at our homestay at about 10am - just in time to have some of Indy's amazing banana pancakes for breakfast.

The sunrise trek has been my last adventure in Ubud for now, but we’re planning to come back in a couple of days for my birthday after our trip to one of the islands nearby!

Overall, Ubud has felt really different from Canggu. It’s been just as beautiful (although a bit more crowded and westernised) and I can’t say I have a favourite out of the two. I’m glad I experienced both!