Best Day Trips in Yogyakarta

Part of the Yogyakarta travel guide — see every topic in All Yogyakarta Guides.

Yogyakarta is the best-placed base in Java. Within a two-hour radius are two of South-East Asia's great monuments, Indonesia's most active volcano, a limestone cave system with an underground river, a coastline of white-sand coves and a string of craft villages. Roads on the plain are good and traffic is nothing like Bali's, so a day trip really does mean an hour's driving rather than three. A car with driver runs 500,000–700,000 rupiah for eight to ten hours, which is the sensible way to do all of it.

North-west: Borobudur and the Menoreh hills

The classic day. Leave at four for sunrise at Punthuk Setumbu, be at Borobudur for opening, then add Mendut and Pawon — two smaller temples on the same alignment, both quiet and both worth twenty minutes. In the afternoon, the Menoreh hills behind the valley hold the Suroloyo viewpoints, the Kalibiru platforms above the Sermo reservoir, and a growing number of smallholder coffee farms that run tastings. Selogriyo, a small hillside temple reached through rice terraces, is the least-visited good thing in the area.

East: Prambanan and the temple plain

A half day at minimum and a full one if you do it properly. Prambanan's main compound, then Candi Sewu fifteen minutes' walk north, which is included and usually empty. Then Plaosan, Sambisari — a temple discovered in 1966 six metres below ground level and excavated into a sunken courtyard — and Kalasan. Finish at Ratu Boko for sunset. In the dry season, stay for the Ramayana ballet on the open-air stage with the floodlit temples behind it, which makes a genuinely memorable evening.

North: Merapi and Kaliurang

A morning trip. The jeep tours leave from Kaliadem before dawn and run one to three hours across the 2010 debris field, past the preserved house and the bunker. Afterwards, Kaliurang at 900 metres is cool and pine-forested, and the Ullen Sentalu museum there is one of the best in Indonesia — a guided walk through underground galleries of Javanese court portraiture and textiles. Add the Merapi Museum on the way down if you want the geology. Back in the city by two.

South-east: caves and the coast

The longest day and the one fewest visitors do. Goa Jomblang's sixty-metre abseil and light shaft in the morning — booked ahead, ten to noon, sunny weekday — or Goa Pindul's cave tubing if that sounds like too much. Then down to the Gunungkidul coast for the white-sand coves: Nglambor for snorkelling, Timang for the hand-hauled gondola out to the rock, Indrayanti for lunch on the sand. It is two hours back to the city, so plan on being out from six until seven.

Best Day Trips at a glance

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