Getting to Gunung Padang from Jakarta

Short version: Gunung Padang is in the rural area and not yet a major attraction, so it requires some effort to get there. Here are your options:

Renting is probably the simplest solution, if you dare driving in this traffic and in the left side of the road. Be aware that some roads in the area are so damaged that local drivers don’t want to take them.

If you are two people or more travelling together, Grab (Indonesian Uber) might be the simplest and perhaps even cheapest solution on the way there, but you won’t find any from Gunung Padang to go back. Then you would have to get a local Ojek to a nearby town and get a Grab from there. To be able to use Grab, buy a local sim card or e-sim in the airport upon arrival. It is easy and inexpensive.

It is also, with some effort, possible to go as we did with a combination of bus, train and Grab.

How we got there

Even though Gunung Padang has been known by the western world since 1914 and recently has been made famous in the West by Graham Hancock’s Netflix series called “Ancient Apocalyse”, it has not become a major tourist attraction yet, though it is quite a spectacular site. So you don’t see advertisements for tours or transport that will take you there. Therefore, I decided to share our experiences about getting there in this blog, since we could only find one single blog describing a route.

In Indonesia they drive in the left side of the road, and they have their own style of driving, with loads of motorbikes on the roads, and some places chickens running between the holes and the puddles. At this time of year (December) there is also quite some rainfall, which can cause floodings and landslides, so that made us decide not to rent a car and drive, which otherwise seems like the most common means of transport for Indonesian tourists.

Instead, after we landed in Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, we bought tickets with Damri bus company, who has a ticket stand right outside terminal 3 (Domestic arrivals) where we arrived from Bali. A ticket to Sukabumi costs 200.000 IDR per person. The trip is 136 kilometers and takes about 4 hours. The bus was delayed about 30 minutes because of heavy rain. It also stopped outside the International terminal 3 on the way, so if you arrive there, you can get on there.

We stayed overnight in Sukabumi, because we arrived there at 4 pm, and the rest of the way still takes some time. We stayed in Wisma Brata 2 Mitra Red Doorz hostel in Sukabumi, which we booked through Agoda. This place is cheap and within walking distance from the Damri bus station. The staff was friendly and helpful, but the cleaning standard could be better.

Next day we tried getting a Grab to take us the last 24 kilometers to Gunung Padang, but it turned out to be a bit tricky. Grab is the local “Uber” app, and usually works really well, but here our first driver gave us an excuse not to take the ride. The second said that the road between Sukabumi and Chireunghas was too bad, so he did not dare to go there.

We switched from regular car to XL car on Grab and tried a third driver, and he was more solution oriented. He said that Grab suggested a wrong route, but he could take us on a longer, but better route. We paid for the detour in cash. The better route is from Sukabumi towards Cianjur, turning right on the road “Li. Cianjur – Gn. Padang” when you get to “Indomaret Jambudipa”. This route is about 48 kilometers but much better road. After turning away from the main road, there were still some very large puddles on the road, so we were happy to have a bigger car.

We later realized that it is possible to add stops along the route in the Grab app and thereby tell the app, that you want to go a certain way, and thereby show the drivers that you want to go the safe and easy way, and let the app calculate the price.

In Gunung Padang: Accomodation, food, entrance fees and opening hours

We wanted to have two days at Gunung Padang since I am so geeky with ancient megalithic sites and wanted to make the most of it after travelling this long. Initially we considered sleeping in Sukabumi between the two days, since there is no accommodation to be found on neither Booking.com, Agoda nor Airbnb. But we found a homestay on Google Maps called “Smart Homestay Bu Ai”. They had their phone number on maps (+62 815-6482-8392), so I called and booked two nights stay. It costs 350.000 IDR per night, and our vegetarian dinner was 35.000 per person per night there. After taking the very bumby ride from Sukabumi to Gunung Padang we were very happy about being able to stay here overnight. Though 48 kilometers does not sound like much, I think it took about one and a half hours, the rest of it being on very steep roads between the tea fields.

There are other homestays in the village, but only a few have their numbers on Google Maps. Some of the guards told us, that the other homestays can be contacted through the official channels of Gunung Pang. They are:

Instagram: @gunungpadangcianjur

TikTok: @gunungpadangofficial

Facebook: Pengeola SITUS GUNUNG PADANG / facebook.com/groups/gunungpadanglovers

Youtube: Gunung Padang Official

Mail: gunungpadangofficial@gmail.com

On Google Maps there are some opening hours for the site, but when we got there and asked, if they really closed already at 4.30, they said “Non stop”. I guess it means, that as long as you get in before 4.30 you can stay as long as you want. But the sun sets around 6 pm in December, and the stairs are very irregular and slippery, so I wouldn’t stay after sunset.

It also says on Google Maps that the entrance fee is only 5.000 IDR. However we had to pay 5.000 IDR per person to enter the area by car, and then 35.000 + 5.000 IDR per person per day at the entrance to the site. It is still a very fair price for entering such an amazing site, and they seem to take pretty good care of the site as it is now.

There are a few local warungs (road side restaurants) by the entrance to the site cooking local food. Also there is a small cafeteria (with a toilet) on top, behind the pyramid on the south side, which you can get to after visiting the megalithic site before starting your descend.

Returning back to Jakarta

For the return to Jakarta Airport we considered taking a Grab all the way back, because we needed to be in the airport at a specific time, and the app showed a super cheap price for the whole ride – below 700.000 IDR. But sometimes when you are in more remote locations, no drivers show up in the app, and that was the case here. We could not get a Grab driver. We also tried pre-scheduling a ride on Grab, but that was also not possible.

After we got down from the site, we sat in the waiting area next to the entrance and had a chat with some of the staff and some Indonesian tourists. We met a group of amazing young people from Jakarta who spoke English really well. So we asked them how they would suggest that we could get back to Jakarta. It ended up being a whole panel consisting of about 10 people – locals and from Jakarta and Bandung – discussing the issue. Unlike what we experienced in Bali, none of the locals seemed eager to earn a good deal by offering a car to Jakarta. Through the collective effort and some googling we ended up with this return itinerary:

1. Our homestay would arrange two Ojeks (motorbikes where one person sits on the back. It is possible to have a backpack on your back). However it turned out that they could only find one Ojek that day, so instead they found a car and their son drove us to Lampegan train station. We left at 8.30 AM to be sure to catch the train. The car/motorbike ride is about 25 minutes.
2. We took the train at 9.36 AM from Lampegan to Sukabumi, where we arrived at 10.10. Our new local friends helped us buy the tickets online in the app, because the app wasn’t working on my Danish phone. The ticket was very cheap – around 5.000 IDK per person. Christmas is holiday for the locals, and since many don’t celebrate Christmas, they instead take the chance to travel. Therefore the train was fully booked seatwise, so we could not get seat tickets and had to stand in the hallway. That wasn’t a problem since the trip was so short, only two stops/34 minutes.
3. In Sukabumi we could easily get a grab from the train station to the Damri bus station a few kilometres away.
4. The Damri bus was leaving every second hour with 12 noon as the latest. So we bought a ticket at the station called “Pool bis bandara – Sukabumi” (Sukabumi airport bus station). The ticket is 200.000 IDR per person and can be paid by card or cash. If you pay by cash, you don’t get at ticket and the accountant has to tell the bus driver that you paid. We arrived on time in the airport at 4 PM even though there was quite a traffic jam.

I hope this will help you find the best way possible for you to get to the amazing Gunung Padang and back. Have a great trip!

If you would like to read more about the energy work that we did for solstice while we were there, I am writing another blog post about that – coming soon!

With love,

Julie Mariel