Before the sun hits Bromo

The jeep leaves Cemoro Lawang while the village is still a handful of kitchen lights. Someone passes a jacket through the window. It smells like clove smoke and yesterday’s rain.

The sand sea is colder than the photos suggest. You walk the last stretch because the horses are already queued for sunrise groups, and the quiet is better on foot.

When the ridge finally takes the light, the caldera turns the color of tea. Bromo is a small dark cone in the middle of it, and for a few minutes nobody is talking.

I write the morning down in the jeep on the way back, before the warung opens and the day becomes a schedule again.