See the sunrise at Borobudur temple

“Now here is something you should know about me – in my daily life I hate getting up early. When I travel, however, I cherish the opportunity to wake up before everyone else and have all the astonishing landmarks to myself. Well in Indonesia my waking-up-early-to-be-alone system failed me. First, it was mount Bromo and its rush hour at 3:00 AM, and now it was happening again at Borobudur. When I got up to the top, there were already a dozen people there. At the time of the actual sunrise, they were more than a hundred…far away from the secluded nirvana experience I had planned. A good thing about the temple is that it has plenty of stupas and levels, so it’s not that hard to find a place where people will be out of your sight. And since most of the visitors had the same intent of a peaceful sunrise experience, there wasn’t a lot of noise besides the camera shutters and a cranky rooster in the village nearby.”

“We got our tickets from the Manohara hotel and proceeded to the temple grounds, walking up to the top of the stupa-like temple with only our flashlights lighting the way in the otherwise pitch black darkness. Walking through such an exotic temple while it was still dark had quite the explorer and mysterious feel to it. [...] Every minute, the sky seemed to transform the tiniest bit, making everything look just a tad different and even more beautiful than before. We couldn’t look away.”

“Usually we first approach a temple as a whole, then upon entry, slowly delve into its details. This time, due to the sunrise circumstances, we did it backwards. Our first glimpses of Borobudur in the light were of its most inner sections, from which we slowly drew out to the bigger picture. This meant that we didn’t see Borobudur as a whole until the very end… and it took our breath away. Had we not been impressed already, seeing the expansive monument would have more than wowed us. It looked like a thousand smaller mini-temples on top of one another, forming one large layered structure. From up above in the top levels, it was easy to forget how immense the whole temple is. From below, however, it was extremely humbling.”