A visit to Gunung Nglanggeran, the Ancient Volcano of Yogyakarta

As I have mentioned previously in my post, WakeUp Homestay does this really nice thing every Saturday, which is they will bring their guests for free to off the beaten path destinations in Yogyakarta (either the beach or the mountains). All the guests have to do is pay for their own entrance fee at the destination (usually around IDR7,000 to IDR15,000) and they do this to fortify the bonding between the guests and the hostel. I decided to join them since it sounded like a lot of fun and our destination for that Saturday is Gunung Kidul area, particularly Gunung Nglanggeran which is also known as Gunung Api Purba (Ancient Volcano).

We started our journey from our hostel at around 6.30am in the morning. The owner of the hostel, Stefanus was nice enough to use his personal car to ferry us around and keep rejecting when I offered to chip in for fuel. Such hospitality!

The entrance of Gunung Nglanggeran is located at Patuk, Gunung Kidul and is easier reached by GoJek’s or private cars. There are no public transport that crosses the place. The entrance fee for the mountain costs only IDR7,000 and you can see the ticket counter clearly at the entrance side.

As per mentioned by the team, the trail at Gunung Nglanggeran has improved a lot since a year ago. A year back, there was no toilet, railings or proper trails but on the day I visited, they have all of that and proper road signs as well!

The hike to the peak takes around 2 hours for those who are fit and there will be a lookout points for you panoramic shot enthusiast as well. I did notice some campers around that area during the hike. There are a lot of flat grounds along the way so if you are planning to camp it out for the night, this place will be a wise choice.

There will be some intersections during the trail but I found out that it eventually leads to the peak. So, don’t be too worried about getting lost without a guide. You’ll be fine. This is a beginners hiking route and is good for the view and some sweat.

There are no extreme crawling and climbing involved but a reasonable amount of stamina will help you for the hike. The view at the peak is pretty amazing since it overlooks the paddy fields but unfortunately for me, the mist came 5 minutes after I reached the peak and started setting up my GoPro (so yea, I didn’t get any good pictures at the peak)

The descent from Gunung Nglanggeran peak takes around 90 minutes and it follows another route down. The descent is relatively easy and near the end of the trail, there will be railings as well so hold on to that for you with tired knees.

A visit to Gunung Nglanggeran gives a good morning sweat and since we are in the area, we decided to move on to Kedung Kandang Waterfall, a cascading waterfall that flows across the green paddyfields in Gunung Kidul area. If you are planning for Nglanggeran, I would suggest adding Kedung Kandang waterfall into your itinerary as well because it’s near and it’s totally worth the visit! Read about my post in Kedung Kandang waterfall here.