Mount Bromo is a volcano its own people still feed. Each year the Tenggerese climb to the rim and hurl goats, chickens, fruit and cash into the smoking crater — a living offering to a mountain they hold sacred, named for the Hindu creator god Brahma. The active 2,329-metre cone is the youngest of the cones rising from the floor of the vast Tengger caldera, marooned in the Lautan Pasir, or Sea of Sand: a ten-kilometre plain of grey ash that is the only desert-like landscape in Indonesia. Beside it stands the near-perfect cone of Batok, and on the horizon looms Semeru, at 3,676 metres the highest and one of the most restless volcanoes in Java. The Tenggerese who farm these highlands trace their line to nobles of the Majapahit empire, who withdrew to the mountains as it fell five centuries ago.
The mountain's fame is born at dawn. From the Penanjakan viewpoint the sun climbs behind the ranked silhouettes of the cones as they surface from a sea of morning mist, and golden light spills across the whole caldera — one of the most shared sunrise scenes in Indonesia. To reach the crater you cross the Sea of Sand by 4x4, ride the last stretch behind Tenggerese horsemen, and climb roughly 250 steps to the rim, where sulphur fumes sting the eyes and the vent breathes far below. Bromo is very much alive: it sits at alert level two inside a one-kilometre exclusion zone, though the viewpoints and jeep routes stay open and tickets are booked online in advance. Its wildest day is the Yadnya Kasada, when the offerings rain into the crater and a few daring locals scramble onto the inner slopes with nets, gambling the toxic gas to catch what falls.