A long day spent around and about Central Java

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.