Views of Bali from on high: a prayer to Shiva ensures climb up Mount Agung, newly reopened to visitors, is rewarded

Hindu god Shiva is thought to live in the volcano. Guides like Wayan Dartha, affected by Covid-19 travel curbs, pray to him before taking tourists to the crater

The monkeys that once lived high up on the mountain moved down when the trees were killed by ashfall in 2017. ‘Now they eat everything we grow,’ Wayan says

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“People always underestimate this mountain,” says Wayan Dartha, a guide who takes visitors to the top of active volcano Mount Agung, in Bali. Photo: Ian Neubauer

Published: 5:45pm, 8 Mar 2021Updated: 5:45pm, 8 Mar 2021

It’s 1am on a moonless night at the Pasar Agung temple, on the southern flank of the volcano, and the wind is howling. My plan is to climb to the rim of the crater, but Mount Agung has plans of its own.

“Experience tells me if the wind is this strong down here, it will be much stronger at the top. So if you want to cancel, do it now. I won’t charge you if you do,” says Wayan Dartha, a local guide who has led tourists up the active strata-volcano that dominates Bali’s east since 2005. (He charges US$50 per person, or US$35 for people in groups, for single-day climbs.)

There’s no talking me out of it, but before we start Wayan must appease Shiva, the most important of all Hindu gods, who is believed to dwell in the volcano. After sprinkling petals over a shrine below the Indonesian temple’s towering gateway, Wayan lights incense sticks and holds them in his palms while reciting a Hindu psalm in a deep, guttural voice.

“My prayer was for our safety,” Wayan says, as we trudge up a damp watercourse that cuts a path through the thick pine forest at the rear of the temple. “I didn’t ask Shiva to stop the wind because that would be asking too much. I simply asked him for the best opportunity for our journey. Humans cannot tell the gods what to do. The gods decide what is best for us.”

Mount Agung erupted five times in 2017. Photo: Getty Images

Those decisions have not gone in Wayan’s favour in recent years. In November 2017, Mount Agung erupted five times, spewing plumes of ash and smoke up to 4km (2.5 miles) high. Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport was closed for three days, leaving tens of thousands of tourists stranded and causing monthly visitor declines of up to 30 per cent. But it was the people on the foothills of the volcano who suffered most. Some 120,000 of them had to evacuate their homes.

“My family and I stayed in a refugee camp for six months; after we came back, life was never the same,” Wayan says. “Before the eruption, everyone in my village made good money taking tourists to the top. Now we must farm to survive.”

The trek up Mount Agung starts at Pasar Agung Temple. From here, it takes between four and five hours to climb to the highest point of the mountain that it’s currently possible to reach. Photo: Ian Neubauer

Mount Agung kept on rumbling for 18 long months, with the last significant eruption and disruption of commercial flights logged in June 2019.

Another year and a half would pass before Indonesia’s National Geological Agency dropped its alert status to Level 2 and Wayan and his neighbours could return to work as mountain guides. But by then, Covid-19 travel bans had brought Bali’s tourism industry to its knees and nobody much noticed the volcano was open for business again.

The owners of hotels, restaurants and day spas in Sidemen, a village at the base of the volcano where tourists generally spend a night or two before or after their climbs, have also seen their businesses collapse.

“We don’t know when tourism will return to Bali,” says Wayan. “But we all remain positive. It’s the only thing we can do.”

The wind continues to howl as we make our way through the forest in the dark, but dies when we reach the end of the tree line – at an altitude of 2,100 metres (6,900 feet).

“We’re very lucky tonight,” Wayan says, as we stop for water and some home-made chocolate. “Last month, I tried to take an ambassador from Jakarta to the top but we only got this far because of the wind. The same thing happened in December, when I brought a group of Lithuanians and a thunderstorm struck in the middle of the night.”

The best time to climb Mount Agung is in June and July, in the middle of the dry season.