Jogjakarta and Prambanan Temple

In August I received a message from my friend Félix from Germany:

"hey Mariate! My girlfriend and me are going to spend a few weeks in Indonesia and it could be nice if we can meet somewhere!" My answer was "of course! We will meet!"!!

We met in Borobudur village because they wanted to visit the temple for the sunrise and after that we went with indonesian and Czeck friends to "Festival Lima Gunung" ("Five mountains Festival") in Merbabu mountain where we could enjoy paintings, indonesian traditional dances, javanese music... It was amazing!

The day after, we moved to Jogjakarta. The first day there we walked around the city enjoying street food, watching street art, visiting museums (Batik Museum), "shopping" in the traditional clothes market... and we also drank another beer in our hostel (Backpackers Homestay Casa Raffles) celebrating our meeting!

street food

street art

Batik Museum

Daily life in Jogjakarta

The second day in Jogja, we did the "Temples route". The first temple that we visited was Prambanan Temple. It is part of the Temples Complex which has been defined as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It is a complex made up of five temples, but at the moment it is only possible to see two of them (Prambanan and Sewu Temples) and not completely. What happened with this complex is that, a few years ago, a earthquake destroyed an important part of those temples

Prambanan Temple with Shiva's temple in the middle. 

Talking about Prambanan, I can say that in the beginning the total number of the temples was 240 temples. As you can see in the pictures, it is all almost destroyed. But they are rebuilding these temples, for example: Shiva's temple, who is the most important God in Hindu culture because (she/he) is the God of Destruction and who has bigger temple in the middle of Prambanan Complex and Ramayana relief inside, followed by Brahma Temple and Vishnu.

Ramayana reliefs

We also visited Sewu Temple, a Buddhist Temple (you can appreciate it looking the "estupas" because in buddhist temple they are more round than in Hindu's).

Plaosan Temple has two Budhas in the main door

Parts of the temple destroyed

Budhist estupas

Budha in Ijo Temple

The proximity of both temples shows a tolerance between two religions in the past.

And talking about my experience, you can also can feel this tolerance between religions because when you are inside the complex, you are involved in a Hindu and Buddhist culture also hearing the meditation music from the speakers and it is interesting when, sometimes, you can also listen a mosque. That feeling is amazing! After visiting the first two Temples, we walked around one hour (thanks to our map and the people in the villages) until we arrived at Plaosan Temple.

Plaosan Temple

It was also nice. Imagine that you are walking or riding a bike along the road, with ricefields and tobacco plants on both sides, in front of you the road full of sand and at the end a mountain. And suddenly, you find a temple in the middle of these ricefields! Isn't it amazing? And the most important thing: it was not a tourist temple, I mean without tourists, without foreigners... only people working rebuilding that temple.

Plaosan Temple

Our way finished with a fourth temple: Ijo temple. It was also amazing, but I don't have pictures to show you because we were too tired to take them. We had to walk up a mountain around one hour, without water, with a lot of sun, very hot temperatures... but we did it and we are proud of that.

After that long day we came back to our hostel to have a dinner, drink a beer and rest for our next adventure: Volcano Merapi!