Hinduism was the primary religion in Java for 1,200 years, coexisting with Buddhism for about 400 years. Originating in India, Hinduism came to Indonesia in the fourth century. This photo is the Prambanan temple complex. Like Borobudur, it's made of andesite stone, which is volcanic.
Kristina is in front of the Shiva temple. Shiva is the Hindu god of creation and destruction.
Shiva rides a bull named Nandi. Inside the Nandi temple was this statue.
It was crowded here too, as Idul Fitri continues for a week after Ramadan ends, and lots of Muslim families were traveling.
This mosque is in Malang. We enjoyed strolling around the park in front of it, listening to the imam sing the call to prayer.
Even though Java is predominantly Muslim, the Hindu roots in the Javanese culture are evident. While staying in the small town of Selo in central Java, we attended a cultural program. It was music and dance from the Ramayana, the Hindu epic.
We really like gamelan music. There was a full band with singers for this program.
In this dance there were pairs of white, black, blue and red monkeys. The color denotes the names of the monkeys whose stories are part of the Ramayana. All these monkeys are good and help to fight the evil King Ravana.
This white monkey is Hanuman and he was our favorite dancer.
Here he is without his mask and full costume. As a result of all his dancing, he had supposedly gone into a trance and became a monkey. He did pull-ups from the rafters and ate a banana while he kept dancing.
We were the only Western tourists in attendance. There were lots of kids watching the dance.
When the dancers left the stage, some of the kids would take a quick turn running across and showing their own dance moves.
We liked these masks with their funny expressions.
Selo and much of Java has a lot of agriculture. This is tobacco, which is grown extensively here. It is well-suited to the climate because it doesn't need water during the dry season. Using cloves to sweeten the tobacco, cigarettes are made cheaply and sold for less than a dollar a pack. Unfortunately this results in close to 70% of Indonesian males over age 15 smoking.
We came to Selo so we could climb Mt Merapi. Our friend Khalid from the Vietnam cycling tour had visited Java in June. He shared his experiences and recommendations with us, including visiting Merapi. This is a photo taken at sunrise in Borobudur, 35 miles away from Mt Merapi. There is a small plume of smoke rising from the crater, which is typical.
Khalid also connected us with his tour guide Triono who is taking us around Java. Kristina is pictured here with Triono in front of Merapi. The name means mountain of fire in Indonesian.
Mt Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia and typically has major eruptions every 10 years, with the last one in 2010. We climbed up the north side, which is the left side of the photo. It’s 9,600 feet tall.
Merapi is a young volcano at 400,000 years old. It's a stratovolcano, which means it erupts violently with viscous lava. Because the lava is thick, it sticks to the sides of the mountain, resulting in these steep slopes.
It has to be dark to see the glowing lava inside the crater, so we started our climb at 1 am. Using headlamps to see the trail was essential. We arrived at the top at 5 am where it was 45 degrees, but felt colder because it was extremely windy.
We huddled together for warmth and watched the sun rise. The layer of low fog reminded us of home since we’ve been on Mt Tamalpais with a similar view of the fog below.
As we began our descent we had a great view of Mt Merbabu, an extinct volcano, which is only 10 miles away from Mt Merapi.
On the way up we didn’t have to climb through all this sand, but we did have to slog up a short section that felt like we slipped back as far as we stepped forward. Our descent included “skiing” down this sandy part at the top, which was really fun! Pete zoomed ahead and got this great shot of 7 climbers; Kristina is fifth from the left. (Click the photo to see it larger.)
We climbed up 4,500 feet and 6 miles each way. It was the most demanding climb we have every done, primarily because of the incredibly steep trails of loose rock and ash. We can’t remember a single switchback, instead the trail just went up!
At the top it was like a moonscape. There are two tents at the bottom of the photo, as these people wanted to experience both the sunset and sunrise at the top of the volcano. We were impressed and don’t think we could have ascended and descended the top twice within 12 hours, given how difficult it was to do it once.
This is about half way down Mt Merapi. Vegetation is increasing, but you can see it’s still very rocky.
Here we are at the end of the hike with our guide Yoko. We were hindered by hiking in Keene sandals, which have very little tread compared to hiking boots, and we slipped and fell a lot but didn’t get hurt. We joked with Yoko that we earned the title of his most falling-down clients – he didn’t disagree.
It was thrilling to climb this amazing volcano. If we had bucket lists, it would certainly be included. And we are also relieved that we didn’t get hurt, as the climb was much harder than we had expected.
A few days later we visited another volcano. Here is our first view of the Ijen volcano complex in East Java, including the smoking crater.
We were happy there was a wide trail to hike up. We shared the trail with other tourists and with sulphur miners. His load weighs as much as 150 lbs. What a hard job!
This is elemental sulphur. We could smell sulphur in the air as we hiked.
After 2 miles of hiking we reached the lake. The lake is continuously emitting sulphurous gas. The water in the lake is high in sulphur, and this makes it a beautiful turquoise color. The lake is 500 feet deep and three quarters of a mile across.
You can see the bands of sulphur in these rocks.
It was barren and windy at the top. We have a new level of appreciation for volcanoes after hiking in Java.
Kristina is in front of the Shiva temple. Shiva is the Hindu god of creation and destruction.
Shiva rides a bull named Nandi. Inside the Nandi temple was this statue.
It was crowded here too, as Idul Fitri continues for a week after Ramadan ends, and lots of Muslim families were traveling.
This mosque is in Malang. We enjoyed strolling around the park in front of it, listening to the imam sing the call to prayer.
Even though Java is predominantly Muslim, the Hindu roots in the Javanese culture are evident. While staying in the small town of Selo in central Java, we attended a cultural program. It was music and dance from the Ramayana, the Hindu epic.
We really like gamelan music. There was a full band with singers for this program.
In this dance there were pairs of white, black, blue and red monkeys. The color denotes the names of the monkeys whose stories are part of the Ramayana. All these monkeys are good and help to fight the evil King Ravana.
This white monkey is Hanuman and he was our favorite dancer.
Here he is without his mask and full costume. As a result of all his dancing, he had supposedly gone into a trance and became a monkey. He did pull-ups from the rafters and ate a banana while he kept dancing.
We were the only Western tourists in attendance. There were lots of kids watching the dance.
When the dancers left the stage, some of the kids would take a quick turn running across and showing their own dance moves.
We liked these masks with their funny expressions.
Selo and much of Java has a lot of agriculture. This is tobacco, which is grown extensively here. It is well-suited to the climate because it doesn't need water during the dry season. Using cloves to sweeten the tobacco, cigarettes are made cheaply and sold for less than a dollar a pack. Unfortunately this results in close to 70% of Indonesian males over age 15 smoking.
We came to Selo so we could climb Mt Merapi. Our friend Khalid from the Vietnam cycling tour had visited Java in June. He shared his experiences and recommendations with us, including visiting Merapi. This is a photo taken at sunrise in Borobudur, 35 miles away from Mt Merapi. There is a small plume of smoke rising from the crater, which is typical.
Khalid also connected us with his tour guide Triono who is taking us around Java. Kristina is pictured here with Triono in front of Merapi. The name means mountain of fire in Indonesian.
Mt Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia and typically has major eruptions every 10 years, with the last one in 2010. We climbed up the north side, which is the left side of the photo. It’s 9,600 feet tall.
Merapi is a young volcano at 400,000 years old. It's a stratovolcano, which means it erupts violently with viscous lava. Because the lava is thick, it sticks to the sides of the mountain, resulting in these steep slopes.
It has to be dark to see the glowing lava inside the crater, so we started our climb at 1 am. Using headlamps to see the trail was essential. We arrived at the top at 5 am where it was 45 degrees, but felt colder because it was extremely windy.
We huddled together for warmth and watched the sun rise. The layer of low fog reminded us of home since we’ve been on Mt Tamalpais with a similar view of the fog below.
As we began our descent we had a great view of Mt Merbabu, an extinct volcano, which is only 10 miles away from Mt Merapi.
On the way up we didn’t have to climb through all this sand, but we did have to slog up a short section that felt like we slipped back as far as we stepped forward. Our descent included “skiing” down this sandy part at the top, which was really fun! Pete zoomed ahead and got this great shot of 7 climbers; Kristina is fifth from the left. (Click the photo to see it larger.)
We climbed up 4,500 feet and 6 miles each way. It was the most demanding climb we have every done, primarily because of the incredibly steep trails of loose rock and ash. We can’t remember a single switchback, instead the trail just went up!
At the top it was like a moonscape. There are two tents at the bottom of the photo, as these people wanted to experience both the sunset and sunrise at the top of the volcano. We were impressed and don’t think we could have ascended and descended the top twice within 12 hours, given how difficult it was to do it once.
This is about half way down Mt Merapi. Vegetation is increasing, but you can see it’s still very rocky.
Here we are at the end of the hike with our guide Yoko. We were hindered by hiking in Keene sandals, which have very little tread compared to hiking boots, and we slipped and fell a lot but didn’t get hurt. We joked with Yoko that we earned the title of his most falling-down clients – he didn’t disagree.
It was thrilling to climb this amazing volcano. If we had bucket lists, it would certainly be included. And we are also relieved that we didn’t get hurt, as the climb was much harder than we had expected.
A few days later we visited another volcano. Here is our first view of the Ijen volcano complex in East Java, including the smoking crater.
We were happy there was a wide trail to hike up. We shared the trail with other tourists and with sulphur miners. His load weighs as much as 150 lbs. What a hard job!
This is elemental sulphur. We could smell sulphur in the air as we hiked.
After 2 miles of hiking we reached the lake. The lake is continuously emitting sulphurous gas. The water in the lake is high in sulphur, and this makes it a beautiful turquoise color. The lake is 500 feet deep and three quarters of a mile across.
You can see the bands of sulphur in these rocks.
It was barren and windy at the top. We have a new level of appreciation for volcanoes after hiking in Java.
