Follow your nose

It's a little after 1.30am and time for the earliest breakfast of my life. Noodles and coffee are taken at a shanty-style cafe - one of only three small buildings with lights shining - at the edge of a forest clearing on the inky black slopes of Indonesia's Ijen volcano.

Others are eating, too, including a small band of intrepid travellers from nearby Surabaya. They're well wrapped up against the mountain chill and chat excitedly about the climb ahead.

A man passes in the darkness. He walks purposefully, oblivious to the small breakfast crowd. There's no time to register details beyond the glow of a cigarette and large baskets balanced on his shoulders, as he vanishes into the night.

He's a sulphur miner, one of a rare band of men who harvest the element from within the crater of Ijen.

The Ijen volcano complex dominates the landscape of easternmost Java. There are several volcanic cones, rising to 2,799 metres, and active craters include that of Ijen itself, which, for decades, has been mined for its sulphur, a bright yellow element that is common in volcanic gases.

During the Industrial Revolution (late 18th to early 19th centuries) demand for sulphur, which was used in gunpowder, soared. It was mined extensively in Sicily, southern Italy, first by digging from open ground, then by tunnelling in hot, hazardous conditions. Sulphur mining has occurred elsewhere, such as on a volcanic island in New Zealand and high in the South American Andes. Yet nowadays sulphur is a by-product of oil refining and other industries, and only in Indonesia is it still mined by hand.

At one Javan volcano, miners dig sulphur from the slopes, then trundle it downhill on roughly built wooden wheelbarrows. Here at Ijen, there were attempts to use horses for transportation but the terrain proved too tough for them, so miners not only extract sulphur, but also carry it downhill in bamboo baskets.