A West Devon woman who turned her life upside down to achieve one of her life's ambitions, recently accomplished a second by scaling Bali's highest and most sacred volcano.

Two years ago Rachel Lovelock sold her house in Tavistock, where she had lived for 20 years and a longstanding job in Plymouth to live in Asia.

'Nothing wrong with Tavistock, I love the place. But with my 40th birthday approaching, I wanted to experience a different lifestyle, learn a new language and realise my dream of living and working overseas,' she said.

'I came alone. The plane brought me to Bali — fate rather than pre-planning — and within a few days I had no doubts that I wanted to stay.'

'Sounds like Paradise?' she says. ' Well, it is sometimes, specially when I wake up in the mornings and look out of my bedroom window across the rice fields towards the palm trees silhouetted against the sun rising from behind the mighty volcano, Gunung Agung.'

It was this sleeping monster, which had killed a thousand and made a further 100,000 people homeless in 1963, that Rachel had decided she must climb.

'At just over 3000 metres it is Bali's highest volcano. It is also the holiest and Besaki, the island's largest and most important Hindu temple, is situated on its slopes. Everyone treats this mountain with the greatest respect — the Balinese people even sleep with their heads facing in its direction.'

Rachel had climbed Brentor a few times and cycled to work in Bali, but otherwise had little experience.

'We planned it carefully, chose the shortest but steepest and most difficult route, booked two days accommodation at a comfortable hotel in the foothills and arranged for a guide to take us up.'

Nervous, Rachel was able only to get a couple of hours sleep before the climb began at 1.30am one damp August morning. The start point was a large market temple called Pasar Agung.

'Our trek began at 2.45 a.m. with a climb of 295 steps up to the temple, where our Balinese guide said some prayers — me too! — and we left some offerings of flower petals. My main prayer had been to Ganesha, the Hindu elephant-headed god, because, although it was the middle of the dry season in Bali, it was pouring with rain on the slopes of the mountain. Ganesha is the remover of obstacles so I asked him to remove the clouds so we could stay dry and get a view from the top.'

The hike began in a forest in the pitch black night and Rachel found the first part of the trek 'absolute hell'. She wondered whether she would make it and whether it would be worth it if nothing could be seen through the cloud.

'I kept thinking "how am I going to do this? This is meant to be the easy bit",' she said.

'Then just before we got above the tree line, I saw lights, "surely there aren't any houses up here" I thought, "I must be hallucinating!" Suddenly I realised the lights were stars — the sky was full of them and we had climbed up above the cloud.

'Then a wonderful thing happened. The depression and aches and negativity I felt were suddenly replaced by such a surge of positive energy, adrenaline and excitement and all the body's natural pain killers that I just found my pace and momentum.

'After that it was so easy — I felt no pain, no fatigue, no discomfort, no fear, no breathlessness, just pure exhilaration. I knew without a doubt that I would have no more problems,' she says.

The terrain changed once more and turned into a scramble over the massive larva flow from the 1963 eruption and then the climbing started in earnest.

'We had to use our hands and feet to find handholds and footholds — not so easy in the dark, carrying a torch and with big drops on either side. But we made it to the summit just in time to watch the sunrise,'

says Rachel.

'Reaching the top was fantastic. It was still cloudy below us so we didn't get a great view of Bali, but the clouds turned pink as the sun rose and we could clearly see across to Rinjani Volcano in Lombok and down to the temple where we'd set out from.'

More prayers and offerings were made to the gods and, more mundanely, to the climbers themselves, before the descent was started.

'I had thought going down would be easier than going up, but it was awful. I managed the rock climbing section, but after that I was so tired that I kept losing concentration and falling over.

'My legs turned to jelly and it took three and a half hours to get back to the temple. I could barely stand. My legs just hurt and hurt and would not support me any more. When I finally tumbled down the 295 steps of the temple I found that I had lost control of my legs altogether and they would not do what my brain commanded anymore.'

Back at the hotel Rachel slept for more than 13 hours.

'The next day I was aching so much I could hardly walk. I walked to the beach to keep my limbs from seizing up — well, they seized up anyway overnight, and I couldn't get out of bed the next morning.

She was totally exhausted and had to take the day off work — fortunately her boss was very understanding.

'I couldn't ride my bike for three days, and the pain in my legs lasted a week — but I'm just so happy that I did it.'