Borobudur

We woke up this morning at 4:30 to go to the biggest Buddhist stupa in the world. What's a stupa? I still don't really know, but I think it's short for stupendous, but spelt different. The sheer size and detail of this place is amazing. There are 5 levels with a set of stairs in the middle of each side. You walk down a corridor aroud each level and both walls are covered with relief sculptures, which tell the story of man's path toward spiritual enlightenment.

The first level, which took me about an hour to walk around (but Josie took about 20 minutes) tells the story about man's place in the Earthly realm. Each level you ascend represents man's spiritual journey to Nirvana, which is represented with a simple bell-shaped scupture at the peak of the complex.


When I first read about Borobudur, about two months ago, I had this very exotic ancient ruin in mind that only Indiana Jones had visited. Takashi Ojisan let me borrow a book (the he just happened to have lying around) with a bunch if pictures of Borobudur and it got me really excited. The exoticness vanished pretty quickly.

Of course, to most of the foreigners, it was the exotic ancient ruin (and the "special" price for foreigners reminded us of it), but there were a lot of locals, including kids on their school trips. They were sitting on the blocks, chilling at the top, playing tag ... it was nice to see this mix of attitudes. To these kids, it's like Mesa Robles Jr High kids going to the Workman homestead or Japanese kids going to see the big Buddha in Nara. It's just different to them. To them it's something you take for granted until you're old enough, and then you just never go when you're an adult because it's always going to be there. It's amusing to me that something that was so amazing to me, some kid might find utterly boring.

The relief sculptures were amazing. I can't make a good guess but If you were to stretch the while thing out into one long corridor, it'd maybe stretch out to a quarter mile (400 meters) of 3 to 4 feet tall walls of sculptures (1 to 1.3 meters tall). If you considerthat it was both sides, that's a half mile of sculptures (800 meters).



There were sculptures of people in all sorts of activities, mainly worshipping gods. There were animals, elephants, monkeys, birds. Trees, a big ship. There is no way to see each sculpture in detail even if you had a week there, there are just way too many. The planning that went into this place is unimaginable. (There were a few people carved into stances that seemed a bit gay, that was amusing).



After breakfast near ther perimeter, we were on our way to the next site called Prambanan ...