Hi Handjono
Thanks for the information but I would expect a route 10km to the east to be a lot further from Liman – maybe they’re thinking of Limas???
I’m going to try from Kare (via Madiun) in April or May or June.

Do you know the Rorokuning approach/route? Rorokuning is a waterfall some 10 km east of Sedudo. Some hikers say this route leads to G Liman (2563m).

Some good news – there is a route up to the Liman ridge from Kare near Madiun. The bad news is it is quite a mission – 2 days up, one day back down, according to a local hiker. He has not climbed since 1999 so the terrain may be even tougher now. I hope to try again, from this approach, in July or August.

Just got back from an Xmas attempt on this utter swine of a mountain! As if the forestry bureacracy is not enough of a hindrance, the terrain makes for incredibly slow going, certainly from the Sedudo side. A very pleasant friend of a friend helped arrange a quasi-legal trip up this route (involving throwing lots of tree seeds onto the grassy ridges) but, other than a few nice views, it was a totally joyless trip.
I got the Bangunkarta night train from Jakarta to Jombang which stops at Nganjuk, to meet a really nice guy at the station who took us up to Sedudo.
In the end, there were no less than 6 people with me, some ‘offically’, some local hikers tagging along, but as per usual in this country, it’s the white person who always pays the bill, even if you’re already paying! It took us ages to get started from the waterfall warungs (after I was expected to pay for a breakfast of noodles and kopi jahe for everyone, on top of the agreed fee – some people really do think money grows on trees where ‘bule’ come from). The weather was very good for December but once on the ridges spent a lot of time waiting whilst others threw tree seeds around – a considerable delay to progress and somewhat offensive and lacking in manners given that I had paid 1 million rupiah for this hike with the expressed intention of reaching the highest point of the range – an important piece of information which hadn’t been passed on to the Kediri chaps, who questioned the accuracy of both Bakosurtanal maps and GPS information from Google Earth! Some of the names on the Bako maps could well be inaccurate but it’s amusing how the peak called ‘Liman’ or whatever your target is called happens to be the nearest and less high one! It’s times like these that guides seem to be more of a hindrance than a help. I would have been better off – and happier – on my own!
As I wrote above, once you’re on the path on the ridge to the right of the waterfall it is pretty pleasant but by 1,750m the terrain was some of the worst I have come across. After 6 hours (2 hours of waiting around, 4 hours of hiking) I looked at my GPS which told us we were just 1.3km from the starting point and still almost 4km from the highest peak (in a straight line). The clouds had also descended by this time. We were at just 1,900m and I decided we should just turn round and descend as the chances of getting to our destination was out of the question in the time we had remaining on this sort of terrain. It could be that the top ridge has a better quality of trail on it – I hope to try from the Madiun (Kare) side one day.
Perhaps I was being lazy to turn back, but the decision of a hotel bed in Nganjuk or a boring, tiresome and unecessary evening halfway to the highest peak with some people – who were quite clearly not interested in what the point of the trip was – seemed obvious! I just couldn’t be bothered by this point. We headed back down to the warungs near the waterfall (under 2 hours) and, after the Kediri lads made one last attempt to utilise whatever was left in the bule’s wallet, headed back into Nganjuk for a rest.
It a real shame that there is no more done to encourage access to places such as Liman – it is pretty obvious that if there was a well-used trail it would be a brlliant hike with phenomenal views of other peaks in East Java and would be of great benefit to all. You have to wonder just what purpose a forestry/National Park law serves if it means limiting access to the outdoors in this way. Liman is one to file alongside Ijen-Merapi and Baluran n East Java and Salak 2 and Halimun in West Java – all peaks officially closed to the general public for mystifying reasons.