Benag Stokel

A New Track To Mount Rinjani

Central Lombok- The tourism area of the Benang Stokel waterfall in the village of Aik Berik, Batukelig is not only offering the natural beauty of the tree waterfalls Benang Stokel, Benang Kelambu, and Tiara Dewa Anjani, but also has the potential go become a trek up to Mount Rinjani.

The track to the Segara Anak Lake through the slope on the south of Mount Rinjani has been in use since a long time by the villagers who live down the slope of the volcano in North Batukeliang and the surrounding areas.

The villagers use this track for several purposes such as to look as to look for medical treatment, to meditate or for other spiritual purposes. They are willing to spend around 8-10 hours to go through this journey of 14km, jus for fishing in the Segara Anak Lake. In the lake there is a wide variety of fresh water fish such as Mujair and Carp.

What is also interesting is that around this track there grows around 75 species of orchids and one of them even can stay fresh for about 2 months after being harvested.
“Apart from that theBengang Stokel area also provides a habitat for more then 556 species of butterflies, yellow cockatoos, small antelopes, small antelopes, deers a and different types of monkeys,” says the head of Culture and Tourism Service of the Central Lombok, HM Nursiah. He adds that this track is surrounded with many huge trees and therefore it there is a numerous amount of fresh water springs.

With its many advantages, Nursiah explains, it is reasonable to promote the Benang Setokel as an official Mount Rinjani track next to the other more famous tracks like Senaru and Sembalun Trek.

“Therefore, we have coordinated with the Mount Rinjani National Park (TNGR) to officially open the Benang Stokel track to the Rinjani. According to TNGR we only have to wait for the permissions from the Central Government” Nursiah adds.

“This trek is also tailored to suit the elderly, kids and women. We have provided supporting facilities so trailing can also be done by horseback riding, by mountain biking, and even by motorcycling,” promote Nursiah.

Meanwhile at the TNGR Center, division head pak Sahabuddin, says that as a new official, he could not give detailed information since he still has to study a lot of data related to the track. “But obviously, from data and field survey it is confirmed that the Benang Stokel track already meets most of the requirement for becoming a new track, so why not ?,” he says and instructs one of his staff to give absolute priority to solve this matter.

“If it is proven that this track is suitable to climb the Rinjani Then it will be very easy to ask for permission from the Central Government. It can be obtained just days,” he says, clearly expressing his optimism.

With the announcement of the new West Nusa Tenggara Province tourism program, Visit Lombok Sumbawa 2012, with the goal to attract as many as one million tourists in year 2012, the opening of this track surely will minimize the illegal trekking through this trail and also will help preventing local government loss.

The Benang Stokel tourism area has around 270 hectares of coffee plantation which was established in 1930 by a Dutch entrepreneur who lived including office buildings, guest houses and fishing ponds open for all visiting fourists.