Where is Rune?

I acted on a sudden impulse early Monday morning when I woke up here in Kuningan, Jakarta. There were no other plans for the day, and the sun was shining, so why not take the bicycle out for a trip to Bandung! Although the direction is not the easiest, since the net elevation gain is around 700 meters. On the other hand, the motivation is higher the more interesting the goal. I consider it more interesting to arrive by bicycle in Bandung than in sweaty Jakarta.

So off I went, bringing with me a water bottle full of water, my GPS receiver, a cell phone, a little cash, and an extra T-shirt. I departed at 06:40 in the morning (15 August) from headquarters at Taman Rasuna, and simply let the GPS pick the shortest route for me, which turned out to be 156 km. If that was the easiest route, I am not so sure, since there were in fact two, and not one, steep slopes on the way, with a valley in between.

The first half of the trip was easy, but when the sun came directly overhead during the first slope, and I was forced to push the bike out of exhaustion, I started to lose hope of reaching Bandung before sunset. And then, to my great disappointment, I lost 300 meters of my elevation gain when the road went downhill and I therefore had to start all over again.

I found a roadside restaurant around 17:00 and had dinner. Before then, all eating places seemed to be closed for the Ramadhan fasting, although I ate some bananas. Water was easy to buy everywhere. I drank around 6 liter in total.

The trip had lasted 15 hours when I arrived dead tired at the Patradissa hotel in Bandung, near the railway station, just before 22:00. Of those 15 hours, 12 were spent on the road, and 3 were spent resting. After darkness arrived, I had actually decided to find a place to stay for the night, and rather continue the next day. But no such place turned up until I reached Bandung.

The first and the last third of the distance was quite heavy trafficked, while the middle third was much more peaceful (up to one minute between passing vehicles).

The following day, my legs were still shaky, and my fingers still numb, so I didn’t do much before taking the bike on the train back to Jakarta at 15:00. There were no extra charge for bringing the bike on the train. Just make sure to get seat number 1D, since this seat has plenty of space next to it to put something big.

Below is shown an elevation profile and a track log (on a map) of the trip, recorded with the GPS. I didn’t bring a camera.

Elevation profile.

GPS track log on a map.