Under the Volcano: Climbing Mt. Rinjani’s Crater, Lake and Hot Springs

You wake before dawn to a cold star-pierced sky and the muffled clink of mugs being set out behind the guide’s tarp. The air tastes like metal and pine; below you, a thin blue ribbon of village lights fades as the headlamps click on and the group files out. When the track opens, Rinjani’s slopes rise like a giant folded hand into the dark, and every step is a conversation with the mountain—sometimes patient, sometimes insistent. By sunrise the cloud deck below the crater rim glows gold and you can see why people come: Segara Anak, the emerald lake in the volcano’s belly, steaming gently where it meets a ribbon of pale hot spring water. The view is quiet and severe; the volcano seems to breathe.