Road to Mandalika – Day1

Road to Mandalika – Day1

Touring backpacking to Mandalika MotoGP race

Finally after 25 years.. MotoGP returns to Indonesia. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately for me, the brand new Mandalika circuit is located at Lombok. It is one of the popular tourist destination island with many beautiful beaches but quite far from where I currently live.

I have bought my race day ticket since the first day it went on sale (last time i bought a motogp ticket was Assen 2009) but i only managed to plan my trip today, 12 days before race day 🤦‍♂️

Why? Because the original plan was that I wanted to go to Mandalika by motorbike.. lets go inter-islands touring!. It is 815 km (1 way) route tho! I have done 600km++ before but riding to Lombok requires 2 times Ferry transport,7 hours at the sea, crossing Bali strait and Bali Sea 🤢🤢🤮

It would still be manageable I thought, one of the reason I bought my big bike was exactly for this long range riding use-case. The problem was that i didn’t get the permission from my wife. she would allow me to ride to Mandalika if and only if i dont ride alone. Just take the plane she said, she ll even buy the plane ticket for me (she thought i wanted to go riding my bike to save the cost, which partially true.. Yes, i am cheap sometime 😬)

Well… I planned of multiple cities transit and i thought i might be able to apply for my “giving back” paid time-ofd and use it to teach IT/Networking topic and share my professional experience to university student in those cities a long the way to Lombok. I was optimist that my boss would also like this idea.

It was a difficult requirement as i am not that into bike club. so far i ve been a lone rider (or doing 2up with the wife).. and pretty much enjoying it. So I ve been searching for riding buddy for quite sometime and last week finally i found a way. I was informed that Honda Big Bike Yogyakarta community has planned a touring to Mandalika, yea! It is official program from AHM so we ll have all the support system in place (mechanic, towing, storage car etc.)

My wife was okay with this arrangement and I was also very excited .. well.. even they have EO for this! it is going to be awesome experience.

Unfortunately this touring program would cost me quite Rupiahs. With this money I can get brand new Akrapovich exhaust for my CB, 2 of them 😵‍💫. My wife told me it is fine, experience is priceless.. rewards yourself she said. I kinda agree but the cost also includes motogp tickets which i already purchased.. and the EO doesn’t offer ala carte touring menu.. take the whole package or get lost. it would be hard to resell my ticket i guess.. so the cheapskate of me told me to abandon this plan and go backpacking…. 😅

Backpacking to Mandalika

In my opinion and based on my experience, 2 weeks prior is the ideal time to start booking for your trip. It is getting less likely for you to cancel and the price is at average level (I don’t have data to back this but I remember at least once that I got even a better rate compare to rate of the months before). So I thought it would still be easy to make my reservations. Turned out I underestimated people excitements for Mandalika motogp. There were no direct flight available from YOG or SOC to LOP, transit flight via CGK or SUB were also very expensive for 18 or 19 March departure. Hotels were full booked, the remaining room available to be booked had crazy rate i didn’t see it worth to spend.

There was moment that I had the thought to just cancel this trip but this is the first MotoGP in Indonesia in the four stroke era. This will be part of history of Motogp in Indonesia. Then suddenly I had the thought.. lets go backpacking. When I was living in Europe long time ago I often did this, lets do it again.

In this age of the Apps we have app for everything so it is very east to get options for my backpacking trip. Almost every time, If you are willing to spend more time on the road and transiting via multiple cities there will be options left and probably cheaper even in the high season. The following is my 3 days itinerary. I decided not to spend more time in Lombok and Bali because I dont enjoy traveling alone for just 1 or 2 short days, urban city attraction is exception, (well most of Bali and Lombok attractions are nature landscapes that you are better to spend more time )

1. 19 Mar, Takes economy class train to Surabaya. 88K

2. Experiences Sby culinaries and spends the night in BnB near the airport for early flight. 80K

3. 20 Mar, flight to LOP. 700K

4. Heads directly to Mandalika from the airport for the Race day showdown!

5. Spends the night in Mataram, BnB. 160K

6. 21 Mar, flight to YOG via DPS 1 hr layover. 370K+740K

7. Takes airport train to YOG central station, switch to commuter (KRL) train back to KT. 20K+8K