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Sigit Pramono: Raising Bromo Higher
JP/Tarko SudiarnoThe morning dew clung to the foothills of the Tengger mountains, Mount Bromo wrapped in thick fog some distance away
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JP/Tarko Sudiarno
The morning dew clung to the foothills of the Tengger mountains, Mount Bromo wrapped in thick fog some distance away.
A man in a thick jacket hosed down the dry-season dust in a yard, apparently oblivious to the cold morning air.
Sigit Pramono, one of Indonesia’s leading bankers and a hobbyist photographer, was helping prepare
an outdoor stage.
The scene was the mountainous Tengger area. The stage was for the 2009 Mountain Jazz Music.
The man was the principal force behind the event.
Sigit’s love for the Mount Bromo region developed through his hobby of photography, ultimately giving birth to the idea of holding an annual jazz festival in the mountains.
“I wanted to rebrand Mount Bromo as a leading tourist destination in Indonesia,” Sigit says. “Tourists now just focus on watching the sunrise at Mount Bromo, whereas the area has incredible beauty at all times, not just during sunrise.”
He himself has proven the existence of this beauty with his camera, showing that there are too many
attractions to be covered in just one day.
“Our main mistake so far has been to promote Bromo tourism just as a place to see the sunrise.
“People are invited just to see the peak of Bromo’s beauty for a few seconds during sunrise.
Ideally, tourists should also be taken to see the other beautiful spots in the Tengger mountain areas, so they spend longer in the area.”
He lists some of the sites: Dingklik, Cemoro Lawang, Mount Lingkar, Titik Penanjakan II Mount Pundak Lembu, Ider-Ider and Bantengan. And then there is the Savannah meadow, the patterned sea of sand, even just watching the daily lives of the Tengger people.
“And for another attraction, starting this year I have started the Mountain Jazz show, which we will hold every year,” he adds.
What began with a love of photography turned into a huge undertaking, affecting the whole Bromo area. With his assistance, a leading bank in Indonesia contributed billions of rupiah to help restructure Bromo’s tourist attractions.
That funding has been used to build a viewing platform in Pananjakan, create a road along the sea of sand, locate a hidden toilet and educate local communities about the advantages of tourism.
These simple things make a difference. Should you now drive through the sea of sand at night or in fog, you will no longer have to worry about getting lost.
Thousands of one-meter-tall concrete posts have been erected to guide tourists through the sea of sand to the crater of Mount Bromo. And a special toilet has been built below, the kind of thing no one might have thought of.
Despite the benefits of the proposal, government bodies got in the way of the disbursement of
the funding.
“It took me so long, one and a half years, to disburse that grant,” Sigit says. “When I made the first offer all the agencies tried to get their hands on that money. It was only after the central government intervened that they stopped trying to snatch that money.”
His ideas for the reorganization of the Mount Tengger National Park are interwoven with the views that he sees through his camera lens. From the top of Pananjakan he has often enjoyed the beauty and the miracle of nature of Mount Bromo in the early morning.
Sigit, who was born in Batang, Central Java, in 1958, has named this the “Theater of Nature when Morning Begins”. With his years of photography, he has published a book of images titled Bromo — The Majestic Mystical Mountain.
As he reveals in the book, drawing on his extensive experiences of visiting Bromo, the top of Mount Pananjakan is the best place to enjoy the beauty of the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru area.
“We are treated by nature’s theater, which presents a play titled When the Morning Begins,” he writes.
“It’s quite amazing! This point is perhaps the best place for the people of this earth to witness how the Earth begins every day with such spectacular beauty. All the main characters in this theater of nature are present — Mount Bromo, Batok, Widodaren and with Semeru in the background.
“Spread out in the foreground is the Tengger caldera, which is very wide and often covered with mist. The sun plays like a stage light that highlights this area. Slowly from the dark, second by second, from minute to minute, the sun reveals the early morning in the area of Bromo, Tengger and Semeru, and the beauty is matchless.”
But the theatrics of nature as seen from the top of Mount Pananjakan have been disrupted — a telecommunications tower has been erected in the surrounding.
“The development of the telecommunications tower, for whatever reason, has badly damaged
the scenery of Mount Bromo,” says Sigit, clearly upset.
“If in the past when we wanted to take a picture we first had to get rid of the plastic waste to ensure that the picture in the frame looked good, but now the thing that damages our view is that tower.”
