How to get there:
The normal starting point is Dili, the capital of East Timor. Dili
has daily flights to Bali. From Dili, drive to a very nice guesthouse located at
S8.889864, E125.519101, elevation about 1920 meter. The last part of this road is narrow with a few
rough spots. A high clearance (4WD) vehicle is recommended.
In order to drive from the guesthouse to the trailhead, a 4WD is absolutely needed. However,
this is a relatively short distance, so one might also consider hiking this part.
The trailhead, marked with a fancy portal, is located near
S8.90636, E125.50586, at elevation near 2265 meter.
There is a large flat area here and
parking is not difficult.
Route description:
The trailhead is a very impressive portal, then
a staircase built
by rocks continues uphill. The trail is big and very clear all the way
to the summit. Comments:
After climbing Binaiya on July 2-4, we had quite a long travel to
get to Ramelau. First a car back to Masohi, where we found Adam, now
fully recovered. The next day, July 5., an early boat back to Tulehu, then another
car to Ambon. We had a slight chance to catch a flight to Bali, but that
did not work. Thus we travelled to Bali on July 6th. This involved a very long wait
in Makassar, wasting most of a day before an early evening flight to Bali.
In Bali, we experienced severe traffic jams trying to get to our nearby hotel,
then this hotel turned out to not provide the rooms we had booked. Restart, new
hotel and more traffic. Finally arriving, we needed dinner. The restaurant failed
to get our meals served for about an hour, just to make a bad day complete.
On July 7th., we travelled to East Timor, much better progress this day.
We arrived in Dili around
noon and pretty soon, we were on the way to Ramelau.
However, after a bit more than one hour, going uphill on the main road, our car started
to malfunction.
We eventually had to accept that our driver would need to drive all the way back to
Dili (with Adam), while Aris, Dave and I
remained roadside waiting for a new car.
They showed up with a better truck after about 2.5 hours.
The journey now resumed without any more issues. We arrived at a pretty nice guesthouse
shortly after 2000. The next morning, we left just before daybreak and arrived at the trailhead
around 0630. Some practicalities, like signing a register and taking group photos followed.
I started up the stairs at 0645, higher up, I realized that I possibly could get to the summit
by 0745, but would need to push pretty hard.
This worked and I arrived on top
of my 52nd top hundred mountain (ranked by prominence) after one hour of fast walking.
