Borobudur, and we were in awe!
In my last article, I teased about two different wonders… As I was writing this one about Borobudur, I decided that this article is long enough already. So, here we will talk about Borobudur and not about Prambanan. As an intro, Most people stop in Yogyakarta to visit these two sites, and they may not be much known to you, but, they rival world wonders without hesitation. I knew about Borobudur from its apparition as a world wonder in Civilization VI. I had no idea about Prambanan before preparing for this trip. Both are Hindu and Buddhist temples and are surrounded by several other minor temples. The fact that modern Yogyakarta has no other such temples shows how strong has the change of cult been. Yet, the size and the detail in which all these temples have been realized show how strong were the Indian cults here.
Borobudur is about 40km away from Yogyakarta. You can get to them by bus, but for that, you need to make it to the main bus station, and we were staying already quite far from it, and then catch a bus there. We decided to use Grab, which is more expensive, of course, but allows us to use less time, and save cash. To go to Borobudur, we paid about 18USD to reach it and settled the return with our driver with cash. Both trips took between 1h and 1h15. Since we walked around and ended closer than that, we probably paid a little less.
The road to Borobudur shows something very interesting. Yogyakarta overall is not a tall city and has very few tall modern buildings. Most of the city is occupied by small houses, one or two levels, no more. Yet, Java is amongst the most densely populated territories of its size in the world, despite being a volcanic island with several active volcanoes that prevent people to settle close by. But, during the nearly 50km of road from the city to the temple, you will never see an end to houses boarding the road. There are numerous kampungs all along, and everywhere looks full of life. When somehow there is a whole between two houses, it is occupied by a rice field.
The arrival at Borobudur parking was quite full of hassle. Hawkers are jumping on every westerner, and use every trick possible to get your approval that you will buy something after. The fact that we use hats makes us recognizable too…
Borobudur is a classified site and is a demanded place. The site was quite crowded when we arrived. Entrances are grouped with Prambanan and cost 45 USD, and you can use the tickets for two days. The top part of Borobudur was closed, and we were told the government was planning an expensive ticket for people wishing to visit it, with limited places.
Borobudur has been built in the 8th century, and lasted 80 years, into the 9th century. It was erected as a Buddhist temple in the Hindu period, of the Sailendra dynasty. When the Hindu kingdoms of Java declined, it was abandoned and discovered again by Sir Stanford Raffles, the same person that gave its name to several places in Singapore, around 1814. It has been built together with minor temples, Pawon and Mendut, all aligned together, although nowadays, the direct way between them does not exist anymore. You can still see some remnants of it, but the bridge between Pawon and Mendut does not exist anymore.
We hired a guide after entering the site, and the cost of the tour is controlled. I don’t remember how much we paid. You first pass around a few areas showing the consequences of the volcanic eruptions on the site. The temple has been built under Mount Merapi, which is one of the most active volcanoes in recent times. And as such, it has survived several eruptions and is regularly covered by ashes from the volcano (every decade at least in recent years). The expo shows all the work needed to clean it from the ashes, and especially clean all the stupas from the ashes.
Then, you enter the main road leading to the temple, and you can see its shape from afar. Borobudur is not a standard Hindu or Buddhist temple, it is mainly built as a pyramid with several platforms getting smaller, and a main plaza on the top, covered with stupas. It is what gives it its peculiar shape. As of October, we could only walk around the structure, as visiting it had been prohibited in order to protect it. The only people who could access it are Buddhist pilgrims.
The carvings are impressive and describe different scenes and creatures. Most of them describe scenes showing attitudes that we should avoid, like gossip. Our guide also showed us the Bodhi tree, a sacred tree in Buddhism as it is under such a tree that Buddha decided to meditate until attaining illumination. Indeed, the shape of its leaves seems to have inspired the shape of the stupas.
I drop a few more pictures here, I can’t comment much more. I do think the photos of the whole structure don’t really make justice to how complex and impressive it is though.
We then walked around the temple, until going down from the hill on top of which it stands.
There are a few other activities offered within the park including the Borobudur temple nowadays, like touching and feeding small elephants, and an expo of stones recovered by archaeologists. They are still trying to figure out these puzzles. When we went out of the temple, we experienced the most intensive forced sales we had during the trip. The sellers that were trying to get us to buy when we entered were the complex and trying to explain we promised to buy from them. It’s the worst point of the place in my eyes. I understand that anyone who lives out of tourism has suffered for the past two years, and we were amongst the first coming, but… it still is a wrong practice to try and force a sale through these kinds of manipulations, I think.
After going out of the market outside Borobudur, we decided to walk towards the smaller satellite temples. We walked towards Pawon temple, which used to stand right in front of Borobudur, but you now need to go around the parking before reaching the straight road. The walk is a few km, 2 or 3, and allows you to observe better the surroundings than taking a car. There are tours organized in old restored Volkswagen cars organized if you wish.
We did cross a few impressive spiders having their webs spread between cables on the way.
Pawon is a smaller structure, mainly one small temple, also carved. It was mid-way between Borobudur and Mendut, the third temple in line, and that still hosts a Buddhist monastery. To access it, you need to pay a small fee, and it includes Mendut too… Which I noticed after buying tickets for Mendut.
I drop a few pics.
We did not spend so much time around Pawon, taking a few pics, and stopped for a coffee.
Not any type of coffee though. Java and other surrounding territories, host a small animal called here a luwak (a type of civet), which tends to eat the coffee grains, but can not digest them totally. So, it rejects them with their protective skin, and people recover it to clean it and roast it and then use it to brew coffee. The process is supposed to reinforce the taste of the coffee. It’s called Kopi Luwak, and is apparently the most expensive type of coffee in the world, mainly because of its rarity I guess. We stopped in Pawon Coffe Luwak, and they have several baskets showing the coffee seeds at different stages of that preparation. And, they have a few luwaks to show too. So, we took our cups of coffee before going on toward Mendut. It was good, but neither of us know enough about coffee to be able to say if it changes altogether the taste of the coffee.
We then walked towards Mendut, the third temple, in line with Borobudur and Pawon. We walked away, seeing how the PSG (Paris soccer team) are also stars around here, and a few more impressive spiders on their webs.
Mendut was an interesting place because it hosts a monastery and a temple. The monastery entrance is free, and the temple close by is included in the same ticket as Pawon, and the fee is very low (I guess that’s why we paid it twice… :D ). The monastery was richly decorated, with several versions of Buddha, and it was our first introduction to Buddhist monasteries during this trip.
Then, the temple is bigger than Pawon, but still a small one compared to Borobudur. It has a huge Bodhi tree and is also richly decorated. Its shape is similar to the one we will see later.
I drop a few pics of the monastery, there are some gems here.
We found Farhudin, the driver who took us, in Mendut. He had insisted we wouldn’t walk all the way between the temple… But, we did anyway. Since there was no Grab close, we went with him, for the Grab price, but paid in cash (Grab takes a 15% commission, I understand).
On the way, he took us to Candi Ngawen, another temple in the area. This temple is still in restoration, and it showed what an abandoned temple might look like.
Overall, we spent a long day between the three temples. It was our first true introduction to Buddhist temples, and it is impressive to see how Hinduism has been merged into Buddhism. The way everything was carved in detail, is incredible. It shows how strong the devotion towards the religion was during the era when it was built. The shape of Borobudur seems to be unique, at least when compared to the other ones we saw during our stay in this part of Asia. We saw other Pyramid shaped temples in Cambodia, but they usually were not covered in stupas.
I just regret a little not having been able to go and see from closer the remarkable stupas on top of it. It is an incredible place to see overall.
I did enjoy walking around, as walking you can see more details of how the place is organized. You can see that all around the tourist sites, everything is built, and even if houses don’t look rich, there is a feeling of abundance. There are rice fields, there is very dense vegetation, and people, apart from the sellers at Borobudur, do look fine and happy here.
