edifice to Shiva and looks, from a distance, like a cluster of huge stone spaceships. Anywhere else, Pramabanan would be mind-blowing enough. But Yogya has to go one better. Borobudur, some 40km north-west of the city, is both the world’s largest Buddhist temple and a Unesco World Heritage Site: a wonder of the world by any standards. Also built during the ninth century, this vast structure – which contains more than 500 stone statues of Buddha – was abandoned for centuries, smothered by jungle and buried under a sea of volcanic ash from the ever excitable Merapi volcano, nearby. It was not until a renovation project in the 1970s and 1980s – which involved, among other things, the dismantling and reassembly of over one million pieces of stone – that the jaws
My napkin was looking ever more like a Jackson Pollock of the world dropped at it once again. The time to see Borobudur is, naturally, at dawn. Thus our final morning on Java saw us wrapped in the mandatory orange sarongs – donned at the entrance – and trooping in the half-light up the stone steps through the nine stages of enlightenment that led to Nirvana. As the rising sun prompted a frenzy of selfies from today’s “pilgrims” it was hard to feel that humanity has managed anything more impressive in the thousand years or so since. Although “Think you’re clever? Watch what I can do!” seemed to be the message embodied in the brooding cone of Merapi behind us. Watching the sarong-clad tourists heading back down, I remembered those other orange primates descending to the ground back in Kalimantan. Indonesia’s natural heritage is just as mind-boggling as its cultural one, I reflected. We can only pray – to Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed or whoever – that it lasts as long. World Traveller
March // 2015
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