There is a particular kind of alarm clock that only makes sense on holiday: the 2am wake-up call for a volcano sunrise. Bleary-eyed and slightly disbelieving, we set off through the dark Balinese countryside towards Mount Batur, one of the island’s most recognisable landmarks and, as it turns out, a rather more geologically interesting one than I had appreciated.

A volcano within a volcano within a volcano

Mount Batur sits inside a nested set of calderas, which is a slightly dizzying thing to get your head around before coffee. The outer caldera, the oldest and largest of the three structures, measures roughly 10 by 13.8 kilometres and was formed by a colossal collapse around 29,300 years ago. Inside that sits a second, smaller caldera, about 7.5 kilometres across, which formed later still, around 20,150 years ago. The whole thing is essentially a volcano that collapsed, refilled, and collapsed again on a smaller scale, leaving behind this layered bowl-within-a-bowl landscape.

Cradled inside the outer ring is Lake Batur, a crescent-shaped caldera lake covering about 16 square kilometres. From above, its curved shoreline traces the edge of that ancient collapse almost perfectly, which is something you only really appreciate once you are looking down on it rather than standing at its edge.

The rim of the whole system is topped by Mount Abang, the highest point of the caldera at 2,152 metres above sea level, a quiet giant that gets rather overshadowed by its more famous and more active neighbour. That neighbour is Mount Batur itself, the active central volcano, rising to 1,717 metres from within the nested structure. It is younger, sharper, and still very much alive, with a dark, ridged cone that looks every bit the part.

The bumpy way up

We opted for the jeep tour to the summit, which turned out to be the last available option by the time we booked and, frankly, the most entertaining choice for entirely the wrong reasons. The track is loose volcanic gravel switching back and forth up the flank of the mountain, and the jeep rattled and lurched its way up in the dark with a commitment that was somewhere between impressive and alarming. It gets you there, but it is not a gentle ride.

What I had not quite planned for was that the summit proper requires a further 40 minutes of hiking once the jeep track runs out, over loose scree and uneven volcanic rock. This would have been entirely manageable had I not, for reasons that made sense to nobody at 3am, decided sandals were an acceptable choice of footwear for a volcano. They were not. The terrain made the final push to the peak a non-starter, and I had to content myself with watching from lower down while the sky began to lighten over Mount Abang and the lake.

Lesson noted for next time: proper boots, and the extra 40 minutes on foot, so I can actually stand on the summit rather than admire it from a respectful distance.

Sending the drone up instead

Unable to make the climb myself, I did what felt like the next best thing and sent the DJI Mini 5 Pro up to the peak in my place. There is something quite satisfying about watching a small aircraft do the hard work your sandals would not allow, climbing steadily above the ridge while the rest of us waited below with coffee from a rather resourceful roadside stall.

The footage from up there was worth the substitution. As the sun came up, the light caught the rim of the outer caldera and the curve of Lake Batur below, with Mount Abang’s broader shoulder sitting opposite Batur’s sharper cone, two very different volcanic personalities inside the same ancient collapse. Watching the sunrise unfold across that whole layered landscape, rather than just from one fixed viewpoint, gave a sense of scale that would have been hard to get standing on the summit itself.

The driver

If you are arranging this yourself rather than going through a hotel package, our driver can be thoroughly recommended. He organised the whole day trip, jeep and all, for a reasonable price and made the early start considerably less painful. Putu Christian Natanael, reachable on WhatsApp at +62 878-6159-2989.

Next time

Sandals are retired from volcano duty, permanently. Next visit, it is proper boots, an earlier start to account for the extra climb, and the full 40 minutes up to stand on the peak itself rather than send a drone up on my behalf. The jeep track will still be bumpy, the switchbacks will still be loose gravel in the dark, but at least I will arrive at the top under my own steam.

Mount Batur is not a difficult climb by any serious measure, but it does reward basic planning in a way that sandals, however comfortable, simply cannot provide.