It's Okay to Eat Ice Cream Twice a Day and Other Savvy Travel Tips

5. Get Off the Horse - Not Every Travel Activity that Seems Cool Turns Out To Be And It's No Shame to Give Up Halfway
For the last two kilometres, there is no road to the crest of Mt Bromo in Java. The Land Rovers disgorge passengers at the end of the road just before dawn and leave them to walk up an expanse of cooled black lava to catch the sunrise over the caldera. There are also local ranch hands at the end of the car road, offering horses for the last leg of the journey.

Crossing a lava field by horse. It sounds cool. So I paid the small fee and mounted for the 20-minute ride.

Within five minutes, I was suffering. The horses are small and bony there, the saddles tiny. The horses were more suited for slight-of-build Indonesians than for hefty Occidentals. I had to squeeze my thighs around the poor beast to hold on and my legs burned and ached and chafed. I gave up and walked the rest of the way, leading the horse. But I watched other travellers - blonde-haired Germans with overhanging guts and six-foot-five Norwegians - stay on their suffering mounts the whole way, pelvic bones grinding painfully on hardened horse spine. But the Indonesian cowboys had promised a sunrise trip to the volcano by horse and by god these tourists were going to have it. The next day their genitals and bums would feel like burned sate meat. Amusing, but I was happy to have learned a lesson, which was: sometimes, if something really sucks, acknowledge reality and get off the horse.

Subrule e: Sunrises at Volcanoes Are Nice
It's also nice to be on mountaintops at other times, too, when there aren't other people around and you can feel alone at the top of the world with yourself or with your best pal. The important thing is to create the right trip for you, with or without the Germans, the horses and the sunrise climb. That said, it often pays to be a part of the organised outing. The sunrise at Bromo was fantastic. We rubbed our rear ends and stared at the beams of dawn.