Our last weeks in Asia!

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So, we arrived in Java after a short ferry ride across from Bali, not really sure what our plan was going to be. Ken had mentioned about climbing up to a sulphur mine up in the Kawah Ijen Volcano complex that includes a stratovolcano, Gunung Merapi, and a huge lake (both of which we didn't see). This sounded cool and conveniently the town the ferry landed at was the town from where the treks up to it began. We sorted out a guide and a room to sleep in until our pick up at midnight that night..
We took a very steep and bumpy ride in a 4x4 and met our eccentric guide at the base of the climb. 'in the pitch black of night we began the 1 1/2 hour ascent through misty sulphuric clouds, staring up at a yellowing moon and down at the lunar landscape we were traversing. We reached the rim of the Ijen caldera of the active volcano and looked down into blackness only broken by occasional flares of blue sulphur dioxide flames. Already by this point our eyes were beginning to sting from the sulphur in the air, oh and the SMELL!! It was a challenging climb down into the caldera to get closer to the source of the flames, often stopping to let the workers past us. The guys working down here are insane. They work all night long carrying 90-100kg (that's my body weight!) of sulphur blocks in bamboo baskets laden across their shoulders up and down this mountain for 40p a kilo, and they can carry about 2 basket-loads a night, so that's 8 quid a day! Hence why I said they were insane. Years of doing this job cannot be good for their respiratory system, but ridiculously we had to bribe the workers with cigarettes to let us take photos of them!
We got down the mountain at around 6am to see all the regular tourists arriving to climb and see Merapi and the lake beneath it, but we felt a sense of uniqueness that we were lucky enough to see what goes on up there.

Straight from the base we headed back to town and jumped on a five 5 hour bus to Gunung Bromo, Indonesia's most famous volcano. We got dropped off the bus at a town at the base of the mountain range, Probolinggo where we arranged with a travel agent for accommodation in the village of Cemoro Lawangand and transport to see the sunrise over Bromo. We then jumped on a local bus up to first thing we noticed it was bloody cold at 2000m above sea level! The hostel was very friendly and served notably decent food, " "

Early rise, breakfast on the go, and a short jeep ride and we were dropped at the bottom of a path up to a viewpoint from which to see the sun grace us with it's presence. In front of us was an ocean of white swirling cloud, constantly changing shade with the rising sun, encased on all sides by volcanic peaks. Bromo giving us a brief moment of anxiety with a puff of smoke into the freezing mountain air. I could have stayed up there all day just gazing out at real wilderness but our jeep driver was waiting to take us up to Bromo itself to peer into it's crater. To get up to it we had to cross a sea of grey sand dunes and climb up a steep sandy slope whilst avoiding Japanese tourists on horseback. But once at the top the view was again breathtaking. As someone who loved Geography at school, to be stood on the edge of an active volcano was a real moment for me on this trip; to be staring down into the crater where a yellowy Sulphuric liquid was slowly bubbling away and rising up inside (as it does every day, don't worry mother), at the mercy of Nature was quite a humbling feeling. A real landmark moment for me, 9 months into this adventure.
From the top of Gunung Bromo we headed all the way back down to Probolinggo and then got on a minibus bound for Yogyakarta via Solo, where we would be alighting. The journey took 9 hours and was one of the most hair-raising journeys purely because of the sheer speed which he was driving at and the lack of consideration our driver had for his 11 passengers! We didn't stop for a break and a leg-stretch for the first 6 hours which is not fun at all. I just felt sorry for the other travellers who still had 3 hours to go to Yogya! So we were dropped at the side of a busy road with no idea where we were on the map. We had the name of a guesthouse we wanted to stay at though, so we wandered into a cafe and asked the ladies in there (well Ken asked as he could speak some Bahasa), and were promptly escorted to 3 trishaws (bikes with a big seat attached to the front) and amazingly were taken to the right street! After hunting around we found a place with rooms and crashed out for the night..

Our guesthouse owner, Badru, at Mama's Homestay was an absolute gem, he took us on a bicycle tour of Solo and into the villages around and showed us daily life in this city. We visited the royal palace to start with and got shown around by a lovely local girl who seemed to really enjoy showing us, maybe it's because I'm just so interesting or maybe it's my devilish good looks who knows?
We then visited a local antiques market showcasing traditional theatrical masks, swords, trinkets and an HMV gramophone! A quick stop at a local hole-in-the-wall place serving coconut cakes called Serabi which were absolutely delicious, before heading to a local factory where 20 or so older guys were printing Batik patterns onto huge cotton sheets inside a tiny building much like a sweatshop, with hot steam from the pots of boiling wax filling the room and the workers all wearing nothing but a sarong. It was really fascinating.
From here we rode out of the town and into the surrounding villages on dusty roads past rice fields and brick & wooden huts, stopping at several local businesses:

- a bakery producing thousands of rolls and cakes by hand, where the workers make £1.50 a day
- clay roof tiles, hand made and pressed inside and then dried outside for 3 days before being baked for 8 hours
- screen prints being painted for sale on Bali
- Gamalan drum manufacture, used in traditional ceremonies such as weddings and, uh, circumcisions. The walls around the workshop were covered in chalk-written workings so they knew the exact measurements to create a specific note. The drums sell for around 3 million rupiah (215 pounds) which is small fortune in Indonesia!
- an arak distillery in a shed, which is a 45% proof tequila-like spirit, that blew my face off when I tried some!

We cycled home through the villages, traversed a river on a boat-on-a-rope operation, and crashed out again!
From Solo we got the train to Yogyakarta, Java's second city and a real hubbub of artistry for the country. We stayed in a lovely guesthouse that reflected this, with traditional paintings adorning the wall and a general chilled out vibe. Oh and air-con which was a bit of a luxury for us but was definitely required in the humidity!

One of Indonesia's main sights to see is Borobudur, the biggest Buddhist pilgrimage site in the world. Considered Buddhism's Mecca, it is a huge monument depicting every aspect of the religion on several layers. The bottom 2 layers, 'the feet' have bas relief carvings depicting stories of moral tales, but most of them are encased by plain blocks to protect them from weathering. The central layer 'the body' is 3 layers of stories of buddha in human and animal form, many of them teachings about how to live life. The top 3 layers are 'the head' or where you reach enlightenment, and are where the stupas are positioned. There are 9 on the top layer, 18 on the second and 27 on the 3rd; 9 is a holy number in Buddhist teachings. The stupa's design consists of two rings at the bottom which represent a monk's clothes, the second two are a lotus flower (Legend says that the Buddha's footsteps left behind lotus flowers). Above that is the bell which represents an upside down rice bowl and the top pole is a walking stick. The design of the stupa comes from the story of when Buddha first left the palace he been kept protected in for 29 years. He came across 4 significant events on his walk; an old man, a sick man begging with a rice bowl and a walking stick, a dead man and a Hindu monk.
There are 108 buddha statues on the monument (12 x 9) most of them are beheaded, trophies for the discoverers of the temple of years ago. Depending on which way the Buddhas are facing determines what pose they are making with their hands.
UNESCO spent $25 million on restoration when it was declared a heritage sight in 1991. They marked all the stones with a code and dismantled the site completely. They then installed lead drainage to stop the hill that the monument is built around from subsiding, before replacing all the stones in their correct locations. some of them were too damaged to be replaced into the structure so they have been replaced with newer ones. this is often a shame as the old stones depicted a story that can no longer be interpreted.

The next day we decided to hire bikes and we rode a scenic route along a canal that lead to another of Java's main sights, Prambanan. Parambanan is a site of Hindu and Buddhist temples, mostly in ruin following an earthquake in 2001. The Hindu temples consist of 6 main buildings for Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma and their transports; Nandi - Shiva's bull (land), Hamsa - Brahma's swan (water) and Garuda - Vishnu's Eagle (air). The statues of Hamsa and Garuda are no longer there, but Nandi's statue is and is flanked by statues of the Sun God and the Moon God. Historians only knew what these two statues were because of 2 distinct features. The Sun God is on a chariot pulled by 7 horses (representing 7 days of the week) and the Moon God is pulled by 10 horses (representing the 10 lunar months of 35 days of the Hindu calendar).

The main temples are surrounded by 4 layers of smaller temples, thought to be representative of the 4 castes of Hindu living; warrior, farmer, priest and nobles. They are all in ruin bar 2 temples.
The Buddhist temple at the rear of the complex, Candi Sewu, is in a worse state than the Hindu site thanks to the earthquake, with only the main building in the centre, and the guardian entrance statues still fully standing. But still fascinating nonetheless! It's a window into the era when religion ruled the masses in Indonesia and not tourists and cigarette companies.

I really enjoyed our time in Java, this is the Indonesia I came to see, not what we started with in Kuta Beach, Bali! It's unlikely that I'll climb two volcanoes and visit two religious sites of world importance, all within a week, ever again! Really friendly people all along the way, and endless stunning scenery as you drive across the country, even if it's at breakneck speed..
We travelled on to another city, Bandung, but only to catch our flight to.......Australia!!!!

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