It was quite by chance that the traveller alighted at Tegala Sarangan. An initial search for a lake in Java Timur reachable from Ponorogo had pinpointed Ngebel as the ideal spot. But this posed something of a quandary. The traveller had vowed never to repeat himself, and a trip to Ngebel would have required a return journey eastwards. Back the way he came.
Thus did the traveller become beset by a sinking feeling in his core: not so much moral turpitude as a rejection of his principles. But fate has a strange way of righting wrongs before they cause a fuss. In this case, the fix presented itself a few days prior, when the traveller first mooted his plan but could never quite explain himself. He stumbled over the elocution of Ngebel, which left him a touch red-faced and wary of repeating the mistake.
So it goes. Standing at Ponorogo’s Terminal Seloaji, the traveller espied two transports. One was bound for Ngebel, with a name mangled by imps in the minds of the uninitiated.
But the other, parked directly behind, offered salvation. It could take him to Tegala Sarangan, a lake of far easier pronunciation and equal latitude on the westward path to Surakarta. The relieved traveller bound aboard the latter. He felt charged by excitement. Little did he know that this was the voice of spontaneity vanquishing woe.
Read more: Travelling in Java? Perhaps learning a little bit of Javanese might make the trip that much easier.
And thus did the traveller head for the barrier ‘twixt Jawa Timur and Jawa Tenggah, split by the heights of the stratovolcano Gunung Lawu. As the transport bound through villages and amongst the terraces of rice fields, the temperature began to fall, and a thin vapour hung ever heavier in the air. The highlands were at hand.
Suddenly did the transport stop, for they had reached Tegala Sarangan. A short walk uncovered a vantage point from which the traveller could see how the village half-encircled its namesake lake. A thick forest and fields completed the boundary. But little else could the traveller discern.
The elements in Sarangan behaved like nowhere else. Thick clouds of fog would momentarily descend and become impenetrably thick. They would then just as quickly dissipate. As he skirted the lake’s perimeter, high above the clouds, the traveller could only briefly make out deep valleys and the peaks of Gunung Lawu in the mist.
The rest he would have to imagine, at least until the fog broke and he could traverse further afield to see what lay within Sarangan’s confines.
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