Bromo and Ijen

Mount Bromo's crater at dawn with mist filling the caldera below, the cone silhouetted against an orange and violet sky

East Java holds the two most photographed volcanoes in Indonesia and they are entirely different from one another. Mount Bromo is a smoking cone standing inside a ten-kilometre caldera whose floor is a flat grey plain of volcanic ash called the Sea of Sand, with the perfect pyramid of Semeru — Java's highest mountain — venting behind it. Kawah Ijen, four hours east, is a crater holding the largest highly acidic lake on earth, where sulphurous gas ignites at the vents and burns electric blue in the dark, and where miners carry ninety-kilogram baskets of sulphur up out of the crater by hand. Both are pre-dawn expeditions, and most people do them as a two- or three-day run between Yogyakarta and Bali.

Mount Bromo's smoking crater in the Tengger caldera at dawn — Bromo at dawn from the caldera rim — the classic Java photograph.

Electric blue flames burning at sulphur vents inside the Ijen crater at night — Ijen's blue fire — burning sulphurous gas, visible only in darkness.

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13 in-depth guides to Bromo and Ijen — food, nightlife, beaches, transport, money and the practical detail that is hard to find.

Bromo and Ijen

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