Reporting from Yogyakarta, Indonesia — — Four a.m. is a terrible time of day, too late for night owls, too early for early risers. The exception is 4 a.m. at Borobudur, waiting for the sun to rise over the Kedu Plain in central Java with 504 figures of Buddha.
The temple is one of three great religious sites in Southeast Asia, but it's older and more esoteric than Bagan in Myanmar and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It was begun in the 8th century by the Sailendras, a dynasty of Buddhist kings who ruled central Java for almost 200 years until their power waned and the temple was abandoned.
The stepped pyramid rises in nine levels to a single bell-shaped stupa surrounded by galleries. The pilgrims walk around them, meditating on stone reliefs that tell the life story of Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian prince who transcended life's pain and became the Lord Buddha.
You can circle the monument with them or climb to the top, but only by looking at a diagram can you tell that the temple is shaped like a mandala, a mystical scheme of the Buddhist cosmos. The three levels denote states of consciousness, from human suffering to enlightenment. Little is known beyond that, leaving the cosmos locked shut while Borobudur reigns, silent and solitary, over the volcano-ringed garden of Java.
I told friends I was coming to Southeast Asia in fall 2010 to see Angkor, a mission accomplished. But for no reason I understood, my real objective was Borobudur, less well known and off the beaten track in the world's most populous Islamic country and a feared breeding ground for Al Qaeda.
Not only that, but Indonesia is also prone to natural disasters. The 9.0 earthquake off Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004, launched a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in 14 countries across South Asia. A few days after my visit to Java, Mt. Merapi, over whose shoulder I saw the sun rise from the top of Borobudur, erupted.
The trip was, despite everything, surprisingly peaceful, even dreamy. It was organized by Borobudur Tour & Travel, which offered a three-day itinerary in central Java, including a van, a driver and hotels, for $375, no deposit required.
The rainy season had just begun when I flew from Singapore to Yogyakarta, about 35 miles southeast of Borobudur. The name of the town's airport, Adisucipto, seemed to me almost as imponderable as that of the province's sultan and elected governor, Hamengkubuwono. Fortunately, I had an easier time with my driver Noor, whom I spotted in arrivals holding a sign that said "Spano," presumably a name as baffling to Indonesians as theirs were to me. He had been told to meet a couple from Spain instead of a single female traveler from the U.S.
Noor, a soft-spoken, amiable man, was unfazed. He was a reliable driver, and as a guide, he was good at pointing out aspects of everyday life. For instance, more than half the 230 million people of Indonesia live on the island of Java, which, at 50,000 square miles, is about a third the size of California but has more than three times the people.
Indonesians tend to marry as early as 14 and have lots of children, which has prompted the government to promote a two-children-per-family policy. Indonesian men are allowed up to four wives. Noor had only one. I liked that about him.
From the airport we took the traffic-clogged, two-lane ring road around Yogyakarta, passing cottage industries making wood furniture and replicas of temple statues. We saw a boy riding a small merry-go-round mounted on the back of a bike and greengrocery huts with exotic produce such as snake-skinned salak fruit piled high. Children bathed in an engorged river, and women in colorful head scarves did the wash. Rice paddies were filled to the brim with water and set like cloudy cut opals in the blazing green landscape.
For a warmup, we stopped at Prambanan, a temple complex close to Yogyakarta built shortly after Borobudur, but architecturally more like Angkor Wat with a central artichoke-shaped stupa surrounded by four smaller ones. The compound, seriously damaged in 2006 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake and partly covered by shaky bamboo scaffolding, looks as though it could collapse with the next tremor.
Noor said, "Hati hati," which means "be careful" in Indonesian, then waited while I climbed the main stupa and paid my respects to a 10-foot-tall statue of the Hindu god Shiva. Together with Buddhist Borobudur, this chiefly Hindu place of worship is a testament to the theological melding that took place in the Middle Ages on Java. The two faiths borrowed from each other until Islam, brought by Arab traders, took root around 1400.
Nice article from Susan Spano!
Original article could be found at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/06/travel/la-tr-borobudur-20110826
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