Lying at Java’s eastern end, Indonesia's Ijen Plateau is a cool,
cloud-covered upland region studded with peaks and covered in coffee
plantations.
For the most part, it’s an area of great fertility and
beauty. But at the plateau’s heart is the Ijen Crater, an acidic
volcanic wasteland known for the group of miners who descend each day
into the belly of the fiery monster to harvest the volcano’s sulfur.
Pictured here, a worker digs up the yellow rock as acidic smoke drifts
overhead.
Sulfur is widely used in the manufacturing of cosmetics, fertilizer,
sugar and matches. In most parts of the world its extraction is fully
automated, but in Java, local people gather the sulphur using more basic
methods. It’s hard, tough work with little in the way of safety
measures.
Despite the danger, Ijen has a magical beauty that is best seen at
night, when the burning sulfur lights the crater in eerie blue flames.
The crater is an increasingly popular tourist attraction, and although
most travelers visit in the early morning, it’s also possible to
clamber down into the crater by torch light – an experience few are
likely to forget.
The highly noxious gases make it hard to breathe and cause eyes to
stream and sting: if you are not used to them, you’ll likely start to
retch and get a headache within seconds.
Travelers visiting the crater should come prepared with face masks
and stay away from the vents and toxic clouds. To get this close-up
shot, must wore industrial googles and a gas mask, and had my cameras in
airtight casings.
Most miners walk the 12km round trip journey between the crater and
the collection point twice a day, carrying up to 90kg of sulfur down
the mountain in baskets over their shoulder.
The 50,000 to 70,000 rupiah
they earn each day might not sound like much, but the miners say it’s
more than other work such as laboring on the local coffee plantations
– will earn them.
After carrying such heavy loads for so many years, many of the miners
have hyper-developed shoulder muscles.
Source: BBC Travel, Photo by Stuart Butler
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