Imagine it for a moment.
Something built around 800 A.D., a Buddhist monument.
Six square levels topped by three round ones. You can walk around at each level.
You approach the first level walking up steps (picture 1.)
2,672 carved stone relief panels and 504 Buddha statues.
Something built around 800 A.D., a Buddhist monument.
Six square levels topped by three round ones. You can walk around at each level.
You approach the first level walking up steps (picture 1.)
2,672 carved stone relief panels and 504 Buddha statues.
All in green surroundings with the volcano watching in the distance…
The stones were put in place first, then carved on site over several generations. Some were never finished – perhaps the sons or grandsons were not as keen on the work as the original workers were? Some are damaged. Some are missing – plundered. But what surprises most is how much remains, and how good the condition of it is. Fortunately it is not surrounded by the corrosiveness of a modern city or factories.More tomorrow.
Gunung Merapi. Mount Merapi. Volcano. Which I first saw above through the window of the bus.
Like most active volcanoes, it has the habit of dumping a lot of ash on the countryside, which not only means good soil for things like the ricefields above, but it also means it covers places up for centuries. Places like Borobudur.
And one of the places it covered was Borobudur…for about 400 years from about 1400 when it was abandoned, until Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles came along and had it uncovered in 1814. (Raffles was the British Governor of Java for a brief period before the Dutch regained the island.) After that it was nicely plundered by the colonial powers and thieves in the usual way of such things.
You approach the ruins on foot, and they actually don’t look like anything much from below.
Only when you start climbing up the ruins themselves, do you begin to appreciate their beauty, their glory – and the love and dedication that prompted their construction.
Or this on a public building in a busy street
Or this. An enterprising pavement stall holder has used handwoven mats in place of chairs for locals to eat and drink
Look at the bases of these flag poles
And these next places, where we stopped for lunch on the first day just after we arrived at the airport
This house was the home of a past discarded royal concubine who took the batik-making skills she had learned in the palace to build a business for non-royal customers, somewhat revolutionary at the time.
and don’t forget to collect the, um, sh*t