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Updated: May 24, 2025
Here within four days' journey from Singapore, one may obtain a complete change of climate, and if there were only more frequent direct steamer communication between Singapore and Sourabaya, we predict with confidence that Tosari would become a favourite health resort for those who live on the northern side of the Equator.
The main interest of Tosari centres round the stupendous Bromo, possessing the largest crater in the world, a fathomless cavity three miles in diameter, veiled in Stygian darkness, and suggesting the yawning mouth of hell.
To go to Tosari without seeing the Bromo is tantamount to going to Rome without entering St. Peter's. The journey is made on pony or in a sedan chair, by way of the Moengal Pass and the Dasar or Sand Sea, which is in reality the enormous Teng'ger crater, inside of which there are three more craters, the Bromo being the only one showing signs of activity.
We change carts in a busy roadside passer, which drives a roaring trade in rice-cakes and fruit, syrups and stews, to mount through changing zones of vegetation, where palms give place to tree ferns, and luscious frangipanni or gardenia yields to rose and chrysanthemum. From the half-way house of Poespo, a forest road ascends to Tosari.
Our thickest clothing was penetrated by a searching though slight breeze, as our little rat of a pony, guided by the syce, clambered bravely up the brae that led through Tosari village. The road bore away to the left, and we were soon slipping and jolting down a mountain path that sank into a crater-like ravine. It was like a descent into the infernal regions. Disaster seemed inevitable.
Of this ride and a subsequent excursion we have painful recollections, but anyone accustomed to the saddle will enjoy this ascent through mountain scenery and vegetation, and even more the morning trip down to Poespo, through the forest, when returning to Sourabaya. Tosari has been described as the Darjeeling of the Netherland Indies.
Lashing rain and deafening thunder at length cool the fiery furnace, blue lightning flares on the solid blackness of heaven, and the storm only dies away when we start at dawn for Tosari, the mountain sanatorium of the Tengger.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the place today is found in the costumes of the native women, particularly the girls, who wear a kind of shirt and veil combining all the colors of the rainbow. From Pasuruan to Tosari, which is a celebrated hill-station and the gateway to the volcanoes of eastern Java, is about twenty-five miles, with an excellent motor road all the way.
The only furniture is a tin dipper. And it takes real courage, let me tell you, to ladle that icy water over your shivering person in the chill of a mountain morning. The mountain slopes in the vicinity of Tosari are dotted with the wretched wooden huts of the native tribe called Tenggerese, the only race in Java which has remained faithful to Buddhism.
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