A long day spent around and about Central Java

By Philip McCausland

BOROBUDUR, Central Java (JP): It was still dark, not yet 4:30 a.m, when my driver and I left the Central Javanese resort of Amanjiwo. The limestone hills of Menoreh flickered with scattered lights: villagers either climbing the hills to their fields or making their way down for the morning market. A few minutes along a one-lane country road, I heard the first call to prayer. The sounds of the muezzin pierced the predawn darkness. In the kampongs of Borobudur, only the roosters could be heard to stir in response.

My last day in a week-long wander through Central Java had begun. Like the others, it promised to be a long and rewarding day. The plains and volcanic slopes of Central Java are thick with ancient temples and monuments, with villages whose way of life has remained little changed through the centuries.

I barely had enough time to nod off before the driver arrived at the gates of the largest Buddhist sanctuary in the world. In silence, we slipped across the dew-slicked lawn, past three sleeping elephants and up the dark-stone steps of the eighth- century wonder known as Borobudur. We were alone with the swirling mist and flocking sparrows until the new day's sun began its climb between the twin peaks of Merapi and Merbabu. We stayed until the sun flooded the rice fields and the coconut plantations of the fertile Kedu Plain. And then, while my driver returned by car, I made my way back to the resort. Atop an elephant.

At first it seemed a little odd to be bouncing along on a Sumatran elephant with a Sumatran guide on a Javanese country road. But that quickly passed, and soon I began to appreciate the elephant ride for what it was: just another vehicle for taking in the extraordinary countryside and culture of this enduring region. I might equally have returned with my driver in a resort car or hailed an andong, the horse carts used daily by locals in the region.

If the elephant ride was a little bumpier than a touring car, the world we passed moved at a decidedly more gentle pace. More time to appreciate the harvest of papaya and chili and rambutan and cassava, the rice fields, bright green and sopping wet, the river we waded into, the kampongs we passed, the great volcanic peaks of Central Java -- Merapi and Merbabu, Sumbing and Sundoro -- in the distance.

Through it all, I was welcomed with big, disbelieving smiles and the melodic selamat pagi (good morning) endlessly repeated. The greetings came from farmers peeking past cassava plantations, from the uniformed schoolchildren who lined the country roads, from mothers and grandmothers a few feet behind them, and no less amazed at the sight of the elephant and his handler and the man along for the ride.

It took about 90 minutes to make our way back to Amanjiwo. There, I got to feed Molly. She took small finger bananas from my hands. The big green coconuts she pawed with her trunk, before stomping on them. With one foot still on the fruit, she used her trunk to rip away at the coconut husk, pulling up the meat to her mouth as easily and elegantly as if she were using a fork.

It was not yet 9 a.m. There was time, still, for the market in Muntilan. The Borobudur area's main market town is less than 20 kilometers from Amanjiwo. A maze of laneways lit from gaps in the clay-tiled roof, the market was flush with Javanese fruit and vegetables. Simple food stalls tempt with country delicacies, from small fried fish in rice-flour batter to water buffalo-skin deep-fried in coconut oil and bubbling up golden and crispy. More captivating than the food were the women who served and sold it. Sweet and gap-toothed, black-toothed and lipsticked, shy and curious and occasionally bold, chewing betel nut or eating their breakfast of rice, chili and palm sugar, they all seemed to wear a wide Javanese smile this fine morning.

The bird market is just across the street. As the fruit and vegetable market is a woman's world, so this is a man's repose. Or, more precisely, man and bird. 2 of 4

Along the riverbank, past the gamblers and the healers, dozens of men were watching the sky, eyes narrowed, looking for pigeons. They were running practice sessions this morning. In a few hours, the pigeon racing, and the gambling, would begin in earnest. A sudden flash of wings high above brought a rush of excitement, everyone in rapt attention on the bird now dropping like a small plane in free fall. All the while, the trainer was swinging his arms vigorously back and forth. It's as if he's bringing the bird in all by himself. Which, it turned out, he was. In each folded hand, the trainer kept a female pigeon. They're what the male racers return for, I was told. Nothing new there.

After lunch, there was Mount Merapi to see, if not to climb. Along the way, my driver stopped by the roadside, a field of corn on one side, rice rising in terraces on the other. He had something to show me. So we walked along the road's edge, eyes on an irrigation channel no wider than a ditch. But even with the help of passing villagers, there was no finding it -- this corner of a temple somewhere now under the irrigation water, the rest of it, surely in ruins, deep under the rice fields. It was, he said, a Buddhist monument as old as Borobudur, as big as Mendut. It was inundated by Merapi, he said, by an avalanche of Merapi mud and lava 1,000 years ago. There was no point in questioning the story. In the 1,000 years since, the Central Javanese have come to know their volcanoes rather intimately.

You can climb Merapi, leaving late at night and arriving for sunrise. On this day, however, I had sunset in mind and barely the time to see it. Returning from Merapi after 4 p.m., I made my way, on foot, out of Amanjiwo, past the kampong of Pakem and up the leaf-littered path. The Menoreh Hills, weather-beaten and beautiful, offers unimpeded views of the Kedu valley, with Amanjiwo in the foreground and Borobudur in the middle distance. The hard-won trail ends at a mountain road. From there, I was driven to Suroloyo, a sacred sunset point. Here, people come by the hundreds on special evenings, some to meditate, others to enjoy the festive spirit.

From the observation post 300 stone steps away, I watched as hills fold into mountainsides, colors fading to silhouette, to the end of another memorable day in Central Java.

Getting to Central Java and Borobudur is easy. Garuda offers five flights a day to Yogyakarta, just an hour's flight away from Jakarta. From Yogyakarta, it's another hour by car to the Borobudur area.