Touring Tuesday - Cycling Indonesia

A Bicycle Mall in Djakarta

This week's touring feature is an account of riding across the Indonesian islands of Java, Bali, Lomboc, and Sumbasa to Flores. The article is on the Crazy Guy on a Bike website. Since it is by far the biggest, most of the cycling was on Java. The account was written by Karman Harrop, who was part of a group assembled over the Internet.

The trip got off to a difficult start. Monsoons had hit Djakarta, which flooded much of the city. Traffic in the city was chaotic. They came across an interesting shopping mall - It had multiple bicycle shops and you could ride your bicycle into it. Eventually they got away from the city and traffic declined.

Upon reaching the eastern end of Java, they did some island hopping, eventually landing on Flores. From there they took two excursions to see Komodo dragons. The first was to the island of Rinca. It was mandatory that tourists go with a guide for safety. The usual hikes had been cancelled because there had been a couple dragon attacks in the past month, so they had to settle for a short hike, during which they were constantly looking around for dragons. The following day they visited Komodo Island, where there had not been any recent attacks. Still, they kept a sharp eye out for dragons. They saw a number of adult dragons and some juveniles, which live primarily trees to avoid being eaten by other larger dragons.