Borobudur – Waiting for the sunrise

Day 74 – Borobudur, Indonesia

Borobudur is famed for its Buddhist temple, built around a hill in the shape of a mandala.

One of the special activities on offer is to go see the sunrise from its top. As I had a reasonably good experience at Angkor Wat, I thought it worth it to repeat it.

I was hoping to find the same pilgrimage-like atmosphere, a hush from respect, prayer, and the early hour.

Well, I didn’t. The main factor is probably the lack of space. The top of the temple is limited, but the number of tourists isn’t. We are crowded on the Eastern face of the top stupa, awaiting the dawn with its rose-tainted fingers, with whirling lights from torchlights, loud conversation and laughs, and the incessant muezzin calls from the city below.

(The calls were beautiful in Istanbul, here they don’t know how to sing obviously and the use of loudspeakers to show it doesn’t help.)

Let’s go back to the beginning of the day. I put my alarm clock at 3:30 AM, probably waking my dormitory neighbours. Since the one on the left woke me up at 2 when he went for a smoke break, too bad, and the one on the right wanted to come also, so she would have woken up anyway.

At the first maim crossroad I reached, a moto-taxi offered to take me there: as I was going to walk a lot that day, I accepted gratefully. Of course, he didn’t stop at the ATM as I asked, he was lucky I had money to pay him.

The sunrise ticket is a real industry, taking place at a specific hostel adjacent the temple. I arrived there at 4:10 (the gates open at 4:30) to a parking with parking attendants ready to direct traffic, security guards checking bags at the entrance to the hotel, 4 ticket counters up and running, a locker attendant, breakfast available, and a sticker-and-torchlight attendant. Let’s just say I wasn’t alone.

Borobudur – Crowd of obnoxious tourists

I waited for the gates to open with a small crowd, and the number of people still arriving, short of breath after hurrying, shows that it’s not over.

We are waiting, while its getting crowded and noisy and people send lights into other people’s eyes because they are not considerate.