Full Rinjani 3D2N: Sembalun to Senaru via the summit and lake

We pick you up from your hotel anywhere on Lombok and drive to Sembalun. The walk in is the gentlest part of the whole trip and the part most people underrate. Wide savanna, the mountain in front of you the entire time, herds of cows you walk around. Bring sun cover. There is almost no shade out here, and the heat is heavier than the altitude.

We start walking around 9 in the morning, after registration at the park office, and stop on the trail for a hot lunch cooked by your team, not a sandwich. Then the trail tilts. The climb from the savanna floor up to the Sembalun rim is steep switchbacks for two to three hours, and this is where you stop talking and start counting steps. Your porters reach camp ahead of you, so by the time you reach the rim in the mid-to-late afternoon the tent is up and water is on for tea.

Camp sits at the edge of the crater. From here you can see the summit you will climb in the dark, and the lake you will reach the next afternoon. We eat early. You sleep early. It will be cold at the rim. The rim-rated sleeping bag in your kit is rated for it. We wake you at two.

We wake you at two. Light breakfast, headlamp on, and we walk out of camp around 2:30 in a slow line. The summit push is the hardest three hours of the trip. The trail is volcanic gravel on a steep slope. One step up, half a step back. Do not race. The people who race quit. Your guide walks your pace, not his.

It is cold up there. Wear everything you brought. The last hour you will wonder if you can do another hour. You can. Sunrise lands somewhere between 5:30 and 6:15 depending on the month. The cloud sea below, the caldera lake on one side, the ocean on the other, and if the light is right the shadow of the mountain falls across the cloud like a triangle. I have walked to the summit of this mountain several hundred times. It has never once been the same climb.

We come down the same gravel, much faster, back to Sembalun rim camp for a proper breakfast. Then we pack and descend roughly two and a half to three hours to Segara Anak. Lunch by the lake, a soak in the hot springs.

Then the second hard moment of the day. The trail out of the caldera up to the Senaru rim is three to three and a half hours of rocky uphill on tired legs. You will be quiet. That is normal. Camp is at the top, dinner is hot, and the view back across the lake to Baru Jari at dusk is, in my opinion, the best view on the whole route. Sleep is easy that night.

Coffee at the rim while it is still cold, then we go down. The Senaru side is rainforest, not savanna. Soon the air is warmer and wetter, the trees close in over the trail, and you start hearing birds you did not hear on the Sembalun side. There are usually monkeys.

The descent is long. Five to six hours, mostly down, and this is the day your knees complain. The loaner trekking poles earn their place today. We stop often, eat fruit, drink water. There is no rush. The mountain is behind you now.

We finish at Senaru village around lunchtime. Cold drink, real toilet, a chance to wash your face. Your driver is waiting. We bring you back to your hotel on Lombok or to Bangsal harbour for the Gili boats, whichever you booked. Most people sleep in the car. That is also normal.