“Java? Funny. Everyone we know goes to Bali,” The Family said when I suggested a trip to Java for a very special birthday. My heart sank. Was it back to the drawing board for me? But she followed up with “It sounds exciting.” Java, Sumatra and Borneo have been merely evocative names on maps for me, not quite connected in my mind to the chapters of heroic anti-colonial struggles that had barely transitioned from newpapers to history books when I was in school. So now I was left to plan our first trip to Indonesia.
Our main destination will be the ruins of the ancient Buddhist temple complex of Borobodur and the nearby ruins of the Prambanan complex of Hindu temples. Both are UNESCO World Heritage sites and stand close to the city of Yogyakarta. The city was the capital of the Mataram kingdom, which ruled from the 8th century CE to the 10th, and built these two temple complexes. Successive kingdoms and Sultanates arose, until the Dutch invasion in the 18th century. The Keraton, the palace complex of the Sultans was built in 1755 and is something we want to see. Also on our list is the Sangiran Early Man site, the archaeological dig where the remains of the Java man was first found.
Also in Yogyakarta is a monument to a nearly forgotten chapter in anti-colonial history. After Sukarno declared independence on 17 August 1945, the Dutch tried to take back Indonesia with the help of the British army. During this period, newly independent India sent help to the nationalists through an airline run by the pilot and Indian freedom fighter Biju Patnaik. He personally flew a plane that rescued the vice president Muhammad Hatta and prime minister Sutan Sjahrir from the Dutch. A later flight containing three tons of humanitarian relief was shot down near Yogyakarta, killing everybody on board except one. There’s a monument to this plane dating from 1948, where the tail section of the Dakota with the call number VT-CLA can be seen. The day is commemorated by the Indonesian air force as Service Day.I would like to visit the monument in memory of the times when India supported freedom across the world.
We plan to land in Jakarta, the world’s most populous city with an estimated population of over 41 million. What I read about Jakarta makes it sound a lot like Mumbai. There is little to see, but it is full of life, if you can avoid traffic jams. We will probably spend some time here walking around the old colonial areas in Kota Tua, the Chinatown in Glodok, see the national monument, the Istiklal mosque, spend some time in the very highly rated National Museum. There’s a whole lot of food recommended by travel blogger Harinda Bama, who also recommends some of the thriving contemporary art spaces. There’ll be enough to do in Jakarta.
Java is a volcanic island with nearly 50 active volcanos, and even on the first of what might be many visits we don’t want to miss out on all. So we thought we would wrap volcano visit, anti-colonial history and contemporary art into a pastel called Bandung. The capital of West Java province hosted a conference of newly independent African and Asian nations in 1955 which changed the world, and still continues to affect it. We’ll visit the conference center and museum certainly. Bandung holds a variety of galleries and art spaces which sound like the kind of thing you could take a week over. We can only skim the surface. A short day trip out of the town would take us to Kawah Putih, an acidic sulphurous crater lake belonging to the volcano of Mount Patuha.
One of the reasons we travel is to watch birds, insects and other wildlife. I think we could spot a few lifers in Jakarta, Bandung, Kawah Putih and Yogyakarta. Still, it would be nice to take a full day for birding in a hotspot. I understand that there are a few spots one can reach from Jakarta where you could get a productive day’s birding. This’ll take some planning. And that reminds me, I’ll have to look for books on Java and Indonesia by authors other than the famous one by Alfred Russel Wallace, one of the two people who independently discovered the fact of evolution.
Don't hold your breath 
