Hidden Gems and Local Secrets in Borobudur
Part of the Borobudur travel guide — see every topic in All Borobudur Guides.
Borobudur receives millions of visitors and almost all of them see one monument for two hours. The surrounding region — Magelang regency, the Menoreh ridge, the Kedu plain and the volcanoes above it — holds a good deal that appears on no itinerary: small ninth-century temples with nobody at them, a rice-terrace walk that is arguably better than anything in Bali, and a plateau of sulphur lakes three hours north. None of it is hard to reach with a driver and a free day.
Selogriyo
A small temple from around the ninth century on the flank of Mount Sumbing, an hour north of Borobudur. The building itself is modest — a single cella with four niche statues — but the approach is the point: a two-kilometre path through steep working rice terraces on a hillside, with the volcanoes visible across the valley on a clear morning. Guided walks from the village below take two to three hours and cost very little. On a dry-season morning it is the best short walk in central Java and you are likely to have it entirely to yourself.
The temples nobody visits
Candi Ngawen, near Muntilan, is a group of five small ninth-century structures with lion figures at the corners of one of them, in a quiet garden. Candi Umbul, further north, is a bathing complex fed by warm springs and still used. Candi Asu, Lumbung and Pendem sit on Merapi's western flank near Sengi, half-buried in volcanic material and almost never visited. Any of these can be added to a Borobudur trip with a driver and an hour, and all of them are free or nearly so.
Dieng Plateau
Three hours north-west, at two thousand metres, sits a volcanic plateau of crater lakes, sulphur vents and the oldest surviving Hindu temples in Java — small eighth-century structures on a bare, cold, treeless upland that looks nothing like the rest of the island. Telaga Warna is the coloured lake; Sikidang is the bubbling crater field; Sikunir is the sunrise viewpoint over a sea of cloud with the volcanoes above it. It is genuinely cold, occasionally below freezing at dawn, and it is one of the strangest landscapes in Indonesia.
At the monument itself
Two things on site that most visitors walk past. The Karmavibhangga Museum holds the 1890 photographs of the concealed base — 160 panels of cause and effect that were re-covered and cannot be seen — which are the most interesting reliefs at Borobudur and are visible only here. The Samudra Raksa Museum holds a full-size wooden ship built in 2003 from the vessels carved on the reliefs, which was then sailed to Madagascar and Ghana. Both are included in the ticket and both are usually empty.
Hidden Gems and Local Secrets at a glance
| Best walk | Selogriyo — 2 km through rice terraces, 1 h north |
|---|---|
| Empty temples | Ngawen, Umbul, and the Sengi group on Merapi's flank |
| Big detour | Dieng Plateau, 2,000 m, 3 h north-west — crater lakes |
| On site | Karmavibhangga Museum — 1890 photos of the hidden base |
| Also on site | Samudra Raksa — a ship built from the reliefs, sailed to Africa |
| Cost | Both museums included in the Borobudur ticket |