Kawah Ijen, one of Indonesiamany volcanoes, is impressive in its own way. It's home to one of the largest acidic crater lakes in all of Asia. The volcano is located in East-Java , near the coastal town of Banyuwangi. The enormous crater lake makes for a stunning sight from the crater rim, but the most bizarre part is that you can actually go inside the crater. Dozens of tours head to Mount Ijen and into the crater every day to admire the famous blue flames. You don't have to visit Mount Ijen with a fully organized tour: you can easily drive there yourself and arrange a guide on location. Here's everything you need to know before visiting Mount Ijen!
Please note: since 2024, the rules around Mount Ijen have been tightened. We visited the volcano ourselves in 2022. A guide was officially required back then too, but in practice this wasn't strictly enforced, and many visitors went into the crater without one. After a number of incidents in 2024, East Java's nature conservation authority tightened the rules, and a guide is now genuinely mandatory for foreign tourists. In this blog we explain exactly what this means for your visit.
Kawah Ijen
As I mentioned, you can actually go into the crater of Mount Ijen. This is something unusual that normally wouldn't be possible or allowed. But at this volcano, things work a bit differently. That's because it's a working sulfur mine. This dangerous work is carried out daily by locals, who earn around €13 a day. To do it, they carry sulfur rocks up from the crater in two bamboo baskets. The rocks can weigh 75 to 90 kilos combined. Wearing gas masks, they brave the enormous fumes coming from the crater every day. The sulfur rocks are then delivered to a nearby factory at the base of the volcano, where the workers get paid. Some workers even do this trip twice a day. Despite being one of the most bizarre and dangerous workplaces in the world, you can actually visit it yourself.
How do you get to Mount Ijen yourself?
From Banyuwangi
We first visited Mount Bromo from Probolinggo, then traveled on by train to Banyuwangi for Ijen. There's a direct train between the two locations, so you can easily combine these two volcanoes in one route through East Java. Many people visit Mount Bromo from Malang. From Malang too, you can take a direct train to Banyuwangi .
From Banyuwangi, it's about an hour's drive to Mount Ijen. You can easily do this on a scooter, which you can rent in Banyuwangi. We paid 85,000 IDR for our scooter. Just make sure you get one with enough power. The last stretch is quite steep, and we couldn't make it up with two people on one scooter. Luckily, a very kind miner offered to take Tessa on the back of his motorbike. Marlo just barely managed to make it up alone. As soon as you enter the national park from the village, it also gets very dark. There's no lighting at all. The roads are good, but we'd only recommend doing this yourself if you're comfortable on a scooter or motorbike.
If you also want a chance to see the blue flames, you'll need to get up early. It's important to be there as soon as the national park opens. Below is an overview of the best planning if you're departing from Banyuwangi.
00:00 departure from Banyuwangi
01:15 present at the parking lot
01:30 buy tickets
01:50/02:00 start hiking
02:55 at the top of the crater rim
03:30 down in the crater
04:30 back at the top of the crater rim
04:55 sunrise point
New since 2024: tickets, health declaration and guide
Since January 2024, every visitor must show a medical certificate (Surat Keterangan Sehat) before they're allowed to buy a ticket. This proves you don't have heart or breathing problems: people with asthma, for example, are not allowed to go up.
You can arrange this certificate in two ways:
- In advance (recommended): go during the day or late afternoon to a local clinic (Puskesmas) or hospital in Banyuwangi or a nearby village. The certificate costs around 40,000 to 50,000 IDR and usually only takes 5 to 10 minutes: the doctor checks your blood pressure and listens to your lungs.
- On location (backup option): there's a small medical post at the entrance of the park in Paltuding. Note: around midnight there's often a long queue of visitors who forgot to arrange this in advance. If this delays you, you risk missing the sunrise or the blue flames.
Arranging a guide: in advance or on location
Because a local guide is now mandatory, you have two options:
Option 1: book a fully organized tour in advance. With a tour like this Mount Ijen tour with a professional guide, the mandatory guide , transport from your hotel, and a gas mask are often already included in the price. They'll often also arrange the health declaration for you. This saves a lot of hassle and is the easiest option if you don't want to drive to Paltuding yourself. Most group tours aren't even that expensive.
Option 2: drive to Paltuding yourself and arrange a guide there. Dit is hoe wij het nu zouden doen: je rijdt zelf op de scooter naar boven en regelt je ticket en gids ter plekke. Bij de ticketbalie en op de parkeerplaats staan tientallen lokale gidsen klaar, vaak voormalige zwavelmijnwerkers. Reken op zo’n 150.000 tot 250.000 IDR per gids voor een kleine groep, vaak kun je hier nog wel over onderhandelen. Dit is meestal goedkoper dan vooraf boeken, maar je hebt minder garantie dat je gids goed Engels spreekt en moet zelf meer regelen voor je bezoek aan de Ijen vulkaan. Bij de ticketbali koop je een entree ticket van 100.000 IDR pp of 150.000 IDR als je de vulkaan in het weekend bezoekt. Bewaar je ticket goed, zodra de hekken open gaan wordt deze gecontroleerd.
Tip: Make sure they don't see that you have a camera, tripod, or anything similar with you, either at the ticket counter or at the entrance. Otherwise you'll have to pay extra for it. Depending on what you're carrying, this can add up to 1,000,000 IDR. Once you're up on the volcano, no one checks this anymore.
Check out our Google Maps guide to Java with 100+ hotspots, restaurants, waterfalls, and temples.
Climbing Mount Ijen
Once the gates open around 2:00 AM, you can start the hike. Don't worry about being the only one, since more and more people will join as you start climbing. The climb to the crater rim takes about an hour to an hour and a half and is very manageable, even if you're not a die-hard hiker. If you also want to go into the crater and back, that will obviously take more time and energy. The hike is steep from the start and it's uphill the whole way. The last few hundred meters to the rim are a bit less steep. So the first 30 to 40 minutes are the toughest part. As you get closer to the top, you'll start to smell the sulfur fumes more and more. We recommend putting on your gas mask once you're near the crater rim.
Once you're at the top, you walk past the little gate straight into the crater. This hike isn't physically very demanding, but you do need to watch your step carefully. A wrong step in the wrong direction can have serious consequences. So take your time and be careful. It's also wise to put on your gas mask. It makes breathing a bit harder, but it does reduce how much you feel the sulfur fumes.
When we visited Ijen, we walked without a guide and occasionally had to figure out the path ourselves. In the end, this was perfectly doable. Now that a guide is mandatory, you no longer have to figure this out yourself: your guide will show you the way.
Ijen crater and blue flames
Once you're down in the crater, it's important to keep watching where you're walking. There's a chance you'll be standing quite close to the crater lake. How high the water in the lake sits can vary by season. Depending on the water level, you'll see more or fewer blue flames. When we visited, the water was very high, so there was actually only one blue flame visible.
You'll probably never be alone at the blue flames. You'll quickly see a group of people gathering around the flames. There are also a kind of local guards nearby who make sure the blue flames don't get too close to the people around them. Apparently they sometimes do the opposite too, fanning the flames a bit so you don't make the trip into the crater for nothing. They have no control, however, over the gases coming from the vents. The wind mainly determines that. So keep paying close attention to the fumes. The gas mask you get is not full protection against the gases.
Our experience
While we were standing at the blue flames, the wind blew the sulfur fumes our way twice. The first time was already pretty unpleasant. The fumes really sting your nose, throat, and eyes. If this happens, the best thing to do is turn your back to the fumes, hold your breath, close your eyes, and wait until they clear. The second wave of sulfur fumes lingered just a bit too long around us. As a result, we couldn't breathe anymore and it felt like we were drowning in smoke. On top of that, we couldn't see anything. With our eyes open we only saw smoke, and it stung so badly that we had to keep our eyes closed. Once that cloud of gas had passed, we decided to head back up right away. Our noses, throats, and eyes were stinging badly, and it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of our whole trip.
We don't want to scare you off, but we do want to warn you about what can happen. If you find this frightening or panic easily, it might be better to walk only halfway into the crater and see if you can already admire the blue flames from there. In the end, it's entirely your own choice whether or not to go into the crater.
Sunrise over the Ijen crater
Once you come back out of the crater, you walk left towards the sunrise point. We recommend checking whether you can find a nice spot just before or after this point to watch the sunrise. The sunrise point is where most tour groups gather. But there are plenty of other beautiful spots to admire the sunrise over the crater lake.
Once you've found a spot, you can sit down for a while and have something to eat and drink. Then it's just waiting for the sunrise. The sunrise over the crater lake is one of the most beautiful things we saw during our trip through Java. Once the sun is up, most tour groups will leave fairly quickly. We'd recommend waiting a bit longer and walking along the edge of the crater. That way you can admire it in daylight and find some great photo spots. Especially if you arrange a guide on location, they'll usually be happy to stay longer on the volcano with you.
After this, you hike back down. This is the moment you finally get to see how beautiful the surroundings of Mount Ijen really are. You get to enjoy the stunning views that you couldn't see in the dark. The hike down takes just under an hour.
Best time to travel
We visited Ijen in September and had good weather. For the best chance of dry weather and clear visibility, the best time to visit is between June and October. Outside this period there's a higher chance of rain, but the volcano can still be climbed.
What to bring for climbing Mount Ijen
- Plenty of warm clothing. Especially while waiting for the sunrise, it can get very cold on the crater rim due to the wind.
- A gas mask. You can rent one at the bottom of Mount Ijen for 50,000 IDR per person. With an organized tour, your guide will bring one for you.
- A headlamp. You can also buy one at the bottom of the volcano near the parking lot. We paid 62,500 IDR per person for ours.
- Gloves and a hat. You can also buy these at the bottom if needed.
- Plenty of food and drink. You start the hike in the middle of the night. You might not be hungry yet at that point, but after the hike you'll definitely work up an appetite for breakfast.
Climb Mount Ijen with a tour
With a fully organized tour , you get guidance during the climb up and into the crater, plus transport from your hotel and a gas mask. However, you'll usually be in a group and tied to the tour's schedule, and it costs more than driving yourself and arranging a guide on location. Back then, including scooter and entrance fee, we paid a total of 500,000 IDR together. Keep in mind that nowadays you also need to factor in the cost of the health declaration and the mandatory guide, so your total will be somewhat higher than what we paid on our 2022 visit. For a full tour, expect to pay around 500,000 IDR per person. By driving yourself and arranging a guide on location, you can still save a good amount of money.
If we have convinced you to climb the Ijen volcano, look here for a hotel in Banyuwangi! Are you up for another great adventure? Then also visit Tumpak Sewu waterfall in East-Java.
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