Prambanan Temple Complex. Yeah, again.

The area just past the ticket boot for the Prambanan Temple is a lovely garden. You can see it here. It’s #10. Once you get past that, you’re faced with a jumble of rock. As the archaeologists uncover the stones, they pile them up in the area. Until they have more than 75% of a given temple, they can’t do anything with it. Considering there were 224 temples in the area before volcanic activity and earthquake took them down in the 16th century, that can add up to a lot of rock.

Most of these little temples were originally guardian temples anyway. In a way, they are still acting as guardians, only in the form of a rock pile that surrounds the complex like a square moat.

A lot of people come to visit in any given day. I had to work hard to find angles that didn’t feature anyone. But the four main temples are quite large.

Before we went in, we stopped off in a restaurant that had a mural of the deities involved. Our tour guide said she would take us to a tree with a bench under it. We could explore or wait as we wished. Yeah, like I’m going to sit around. Anyway, we were supposed to satisfy ourselves with just looking at the pictures if we weren’t willing to climb some steps.

Of course we are talking about the kind of steps typical of temples. Steep, uneven, and often missing anything like a railing. But I had confidence in my treking poles, if not my joints. I made it to the top of every one of the main temples. I didn’t have time to go into any of the little side ones, though.

Typically we would climb the main steps, then another flight, then turn to the side and go around a retaining wall, up a short flight, turn and continue on into a dark chamber where the statue would reside. It was a pretty good work out.

The retaining walls all were covered in murals depicting the same story we watched at the Ramayana Ballet.

On top of the walls are a bit of an oddity. They are stupa, which are actually Buddhist, with lingam coming out of the top. Prambanan is one of the few temples in Indonesia to mix their traditions in quite this way.

In the middle of each temple were our normal set of four: Augustia the wiseman, Durga the warrior wife, Siva the change, and Ganesh the hospitable.

Before you complain about the poor quality of my photography keep in mind that I am balancing my cameras on top of my treking poles while breathing hard from the climb and getting jostled by other tourists. Auto focus couldn’t handle the dim light, and my glasses don’t cut it. I’m rather proud of myself.

Prambanan Temple was built by the Sanjaya Dynasty, a Hindu group who were pollitical rivals to the Buddhist Sailendra people in the area. It took over a hundred years to complete construction of the original complex.

Since it’s reconstruction, the main temple has been renovated a number of times. They were under construction working on a new drain system intended to protect the foundations when we visited. There had been some problems in the previous rainy season.Personally, I’d have been more worried about all the volcanic ash, but they seemed quite used to it.

It was Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles who stumbled upon the site in 1811. A Brit who was born in Jamaica, Raffles is probably better known for the founding of Singapore and his statesmanship in British Java than for his archaeological prowess.

You’ve already seen from last week that there are some spectacular and inspiring views available in the complex. Wandering around in them certainly felt exotic. What’s more, most of us at least gave it a try. The lonely bench under the tree held more locals than members of our group.

When we did assemble, many nice people got up to make room for us. Since it and the hot and crowded insides of the temple were the only places to get out of the sun, I was releived.

We were lucky. At the end we were able to catch the “train” running from Pranbanan Temple to one of the guardian temples, which was just far enough to make me glad of the chance to sit.