Climbing into the Kawah Ijen volcano, as described in this blog, was an unforgettable chance to get smothered in sulphur gases, see the unusual 'Blue Lava', and be constantly forced off the tiny, rocky and dangerous path by miners carrying huge bamboo baskets of sulphur, that they had just mined while dodging the poisonous gases at the bottom of the volcano. It is incredibly hard work in one of the most severe and dangerous environments on earth. To quote Booker T Washington, who visited a similar volcanic mine in Sicily in the nineteenth century "I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life.".