Sunrise Hike to Mount Sibayak

After Bukit Lawang we wanted to travel south towards Lake Toba and a brief stop off at the town of Berastagi.

Berastagi is saddled between 2 of Sumatra’s active volcanoes, mount Sinabung (on the FCDO red list because of it’s potential for violent, and often deadly, eruptions) and mount Sibayak, which is fairly stable and has not erupted in over 100 years.

Sibayak, although active, is a popular hiking and camping destination because of it’s epic views over the whole region from the top. The best time to see these views is at sunrise…

We wanted to come here, morbidly, after watching the documentary “Into the Inferno” by Werner Herzog about a year ago, which shows footage of an unexpected pyroclastic flow which claimed multiple lives in the region… Not spooky at all… 😬😬😬

We got the “tourist bus” to Berastagi, which is essentially just a 7-seater shared taxi filled with tourists…

We found the transport in Sumatra to be relatively difficult to be honest, even as seasoned travellers. I usually prefer to rely on public transport compared to “tourist buses” as I feel that just asking someone to take you direct from A to B, loses part of the adventure of travel. But despite Bukit Lawang, Berastagi and Lake Toba being the 3 most popular destinations for international and domestic tourists alike, the infrastructure connecting them is very poor. There are seemingly no public buses we could take between the towns which did not require multiple changes and a crystal ball… The bus to Bukit Lawang was actually 3 separate buses, so 2 changes along the way, with no information on what the timetables were, it was a bus and hope type situation. And to get to Berastagi, we would have to connect back through Medan, and change 3 times it looked like. There are also no good train lines in Northern Sumatra. Luckily, taxis and car travel is relatively cheap, so the “tourist buses” didn’t leave us much out of pocket. Just a bit car sick due to the uneven roads FULL of potholes – every journey took 50% longer than expected, due to either traffic or slowing down to traverse the terrible roads…

This journey to Berastagi was possibly the bumpiest car journey we’ve ever been on. It was supposed to take 3 hours, but took closer to 5, and even included a lunch stop in the foothills of Mount Sinabung, which is supposed to have a 5km exclusion zone around it… We were definitely closer than this, which was unexpected…

Unfortunately, despite being on top of the volcano, we didn’t even get a good view of it! The top of it was covered in thick cloud, so we couldn’t really see it’s full scale.

Sinabung erupted as recently as 2021, and erupts every 2 years usually… So it’s overdue eeek! Which was pretty spooky, especially seeing the petrified remains of trees on the slopes and scarring of a lava flow to one side too.

We continued on (unscathed) and arrived at Berastagi, which was much cooler compared to Medan and Bukit Lawang. We walked into the town. We only planned to stay one night, essentially just to wake up early to climb Mount Sibayak for sunrise, but I wished we had one more night, as this region is home to a Batak community known as the Karo Batak and you can see the distinctive architecture everywhere – square pointed roofs adorned with buffalo horns. It would have been nice to visit them properly.

In the evening for sunset, we had wanted to walk to the top of a viewpoint in the centre of Berastagi, which has good views of both Sinabung and Sibayak. But the cloud cover was too bad. Dave kept popping out though, as the weather does change quickly here, and in a brief clearing, managed this pic from the balcony.

So by 8:30pm we were in bed and trying to sleep, with our alarms set for 3:45am to get up…

3:45am came. Anyone who knows me even slightly, knows how bad I am at mornings, I did not enjoy getting up!! Coupled with the fact that Dave popped his head out and came back in saying “it’s raining”… I was not inspired to get up. But I did, and by 4:15am we were in a minivan driving over to Sibayak.

We arrived at the start of the trail at about 5am, the walk is only about 1 hour, but it was very steep, especially at the start, so at 5am, with little sleep, no breakfast and feeling groggy as hell, it was very tough going. Throw in the strong smell of sulphur and the fact that is was still raining and shrouded in cloud, AND pitch black still. It definitely wasn’t the “easy” hike it was made out to be haha.

But we made it, past the deafening sulphur vents and fumaroles, past the “no entry” pathway (which apparently several people have died from walking off as the (fake) “path” ends in a cliff drop which is hard to see in the dark if you don’t have a head torch…), through the slippery mud and rocks, to the 3rd highest summit on the crater rim.

It was still dark, and still covered in cloud. The sulphur smell was intense and made me heave a few times as we sat in the dark waiting for sunrise…. This close to the equator, sunrise is FAST and in a matter of minutes we could suddenly see…. But not very far… ☹️ We were very unlucky with the weather and the cloud stayed close the whole time. We had no view whatsoever. Which we have to say, was incredibly disappointing after such an early start and tough conditions.

We waited a few moments, but the cloud didn’t seem to want to clear at all, and it was surprisingly cold here, even with all the layers we had on. The sulphur was also getting a lot, stinging our eyes and making us cough. So we started the descent.

It was a lot easier coming down, as we could actually see where we were stepping, and it wasn’t so scary anymore – the sound of the fumaroles, and not knowing where they were, was quite spooky, but now we could see them, they weren’t that bad.

The trail was actually very varied. There was a part through a pine forest, with needles on the floor, then a jungle bit with palm trees and ferns – which was quite slippy in the rain. Then a rocky and ashy part.

The best part of the walk was the end, when we were taken to a natural hot spring to recover 🤣 it was hot and nice, but very stinky!! Our skin and clothes smelled of rotten eggs for hours after…

It really was a shame about the weather. Climbing an active volcano was one of the main things Dave wanted to do on this trip, as well as also get a good view of Sinabung. And we did climb it… Only we didn’t get to see the epic views overlooking Sinabung or the other smaller cones in the region. The cloud was so close, you couldn’t even tell how high we were, it didn’t really feel real…

We will have to try again somewhere else – It’s a good job Indonesia has lots of volcanoes haha!!

Watch my Youtube video on this post here: