After warming up trip around beach in southern Lombok, we continued to prepare main goal in this trip : reach the summit of Mount Rinjani. We bought several goods in supermarket around Majapahit Street to complete our logistics. Finally at August 13th at Dawn We leaved Mataram and heading to Sembalun (The Last Village before Rinjani Mountain). There 2 main options if you about to hike Mount Rinjani : take Sembalun route or take Senaru route. We decided to take Sembalun route so we could continue our trip to Gili Trawangan easily. In Sembalun we filled registration form and then we rented car to transport us to the gate of Mount Rinjani National Park. After that we walked from there.
 

Registration Place, Sembalun

The Welcome Gate of Mount Rinjani National Park

Mountaineering Track of Rinjani

There are several hills named "9 Bukit Penyesalan" (9 Hills of Regret). It's named like that because the track of the hill was so tough so yo would regret to trying to reach the summit of Rinjani. I was about to give up and want to going back home, but my buddies always encourage me so i could reached the last camping ground before the summit. The last camping ground before summit called "Plawangan Sembalun" (means The Gate of Sembalun). We took about 8 hours walked to reach Plawangan Sembalun because the track was so tough for us (Honestly I didn't prepare my body with any excercise before going to Rinjani). So we reached Plawangan Sembalun around 11.00 PM

We enjoy sunrise at Plawangan Sembalun. It is so beautiful from up there with the view of Segara Anakan Lake and  and hazy view of Sumbawa Island. In the morning around 7.00 AM we decided to move the tent to the closer area of intersection path. Left path we will  lead to the summit while the right path will lead to Segara Anakan Lake. After that a few of us (Me, Tio, Narendra, Hemas and Rian) decided to visit Segara Anakan while Tio's Friend from IPB (named Bang Omesh and I forget the another one) who joined us decided to stay at the tent.

Sunrise View From Plawangan Sembalun

Segara Anakan View From Plawangan Sembalun

It took 3 hours of walk to reach Segara Anakan from Plawangan Sembalun. Unfortunately the lake is misty when we got there so we couldn't see the view of Mount Baru in the middle of lake. There were many fisherman around lake because there were many huge fish around lake. There is some hot springs around Segara Anakan with male and female place is separated. But we weren't visit hot springs since we planned to going back to the tent as soon as possible because the night was about to come after a few hours we tour the lake.

Segara Anakan Lake in Misty Panorama

Flower Bush Near Segara Anakan

Hot Spring Spot From Up

Sunset View From Plawangan Sembalun

After we arrived at the tent the meals was prepared by Tio's friend. Then we took some rest before heading to the summit  (To be continue.....Wait for the next part....)