Sunrise and Sunset Spots in Yogyakarta

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

Yogyakarta sits on a plain between a volcano and an ocean, with hill ranges either side, which gives it an unusual number of genuinely good vantage points within an hour's drive. The famous ones — the Borobudur mist from Punthuk Setumbu, the sunset over Ratu Boko — are famous for good reason and correspondingly busy. The hills either side of them hold half a dozen equivalents with a fraction of the people, and the whole thing depends on going in the dry season when the mornings are clear.

Sunrise: the Borobudur valley

Punthuk Setumbu is a hill about three kilometres west of Borobudur, and on a clear dry-season morning the Progo valley fills with mist while the temple's stupas break through it, with Merapi and Merbabu behind. It is where almost every famous Borobudur sunrise photograph is taken. Entry is a few tens of thousands of rupiah and the walk up is fifteen minutes. Arrive by five. Barede Hill nearby gives a similar view, and the Menoreh ridge above them holds several viewpoints — Kendil, Suroloyo — that are higher, emptier and look across both the valley and the volcanoes.

Sunrise: Merapi

The mountain is only reliably visible before about nine, so any Merapi viewpoint is a dawn proposition. Bukit Klangon, on the southern flank near Kaliurang, gives a clean view of the cone from around 1,100 metres and is reachable by car. The jeep tours run sunrise departures onto the flank itself. Further out, the Kalibiru viewpoint in the Menoreh hills west of the city looks over the Sermo reservoir with the volcanoes behind, and has the wooden viewing platforms that made it an Instagram fixture — it is now heavily commercialised but the view is still the view.

Sunset

Ratu Boko, on a hill four kilometres south of Prambanan, is the best sunset in the region: a monumental stone gateway on a ridge, with the sun going down behind the Menoreh hills and Prambanan's spires visible below. It is ticketed and busy but big enough to absorb it. Alternatives: Bukit Bego and the Mangunan pine forest south of the city, which look out over the Oyo river valley; Gunungkidul's south coast for an ocean sunset off the cliffs; and, in the city itself, a handful of hotel rooftops around Malioboro.

Practicalities

Sunrise is around 5.30 and sunset around 5.45 all year, with a short tropical twilight of about twenty minutes either side. That means very early starts — a Punthuk Setumbu sunrise means leaving the city around four. Drivers will do a sunrise-plus-Borobudur run for 500,000–700,000 rupiah. The dry season, May to September, gives the reliable clear mornings and the mist; the wet season is unpredictable in the morning and produces much better skies in the evening. Most viewpoints charge 15,000–35,000 rupiah plus parking, cash only, and it is cold enough before dawn to want a jacket.

Sunrise and Sunset Spots at a glance

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