It is best to come to the active volcano Ijen (Gunung Ijen), located in East Java (Indonesia) late in the evening or in the middle of the night.
During the day, there is a beautiful, but unremarkable place with a sulphurous lake, the waters of which gleam with a pleasant turquoise color. And the activity of the volcano during the day looks no different from other volcanoes - streams of smoke from under the ground and red lava.
Also during the day, you can watch how locals manually extract sulfur from volcanic rock and carry baskets of rock along a path more than 3 km long from the volcano itself to the processing plant.
The real show here begins at nightfall. The thing is that in one of the craters of the volcano a rare and unusual natural phenomenon occurs, the emergence of blue volcanic gases on the surface.
The beautiful neon blue color is obtained from the combustion of hydrogen sulfide at a temperature of 600 degrees Celsius. It is this fantastically spectacular glow that attracts many tourists here. The most incredible thing is when blue lava begins to emerge from the volcano. In fact, this is ordinary lava with burning hydrogen sulfide.
Promotional video:
Recently, 32-year-old Thai photographer Donnie Nugraha Pratama managed to take new pictures of Ijen's glow.
Volcano Ijen is one of the largest sulfur deposits in the world. The highest point of the volcano is at an altitude of 2803 meters (Merapi stratovolcano), but the glowing gases come from a much lower place.