French Ghosts, Russian Nights, and American Outlaws: Souvenirs of a Professional Vagabond. Susan Spano

to a single bell-shaped stupa, or tower, surrounded by galleries around which pilgrims walk, meditating on stone reliefs that tell the life story of Siddhartha Guatama, an Indian prince who transcended life’s pain to become the Lord Buddha.

      You can circle the monument with them or climb to the top, but only by looking at a diagram can you tell that the temple is shaped like a mandala, a mystical scheme of the Buddhist cosmos, with three levels demarking states of consciousness from suffering to enlightenment. Little is known beyond that, leaving the cosmos locked while the temple silently reigns over the volcano-ringed garden of Java.

      I told friends I was going to Southeast Asia to see Angkor, a mission accomplished. But for no reason I understood, my real objective was Borobudur, less well-known and off the beaten track, in the world’s most populous Islamic country, a feared breeding ground for Al Qaeda. Not only that, Indonesia is one of the most natural disaster-prone places on earth, from Krakatoa west of Java to the 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra that launched the 2004 tsunami, killing 230,000 people in 14 countries across Southeast Asia. A few days after my visit to Java, there was a major eruption of Mt. Merapi, over whose shoulder I saw the sun rise from the top of Borobudur.

      Given all that, it was a surprisingly dreamy trip, organized by Borobudur Tour and Travel, a company I found online with a pleasingly laid-back approach. They offered a three-day itinerary in central Java, including a van, a driver, and hotels, for $375, no deposit required.

      The rainy season had just begun when I flew from Singapore to Yogyakarta, about 35 miles southeast of Borobudur. In the arrival hall at the airport, I spotted a man holding a sign that said Spano. He turned out to be my amiable driver and guide Noor.

      From the airport, we took the traffic-clogged, two-lane ringed road around Yogyakarta, passing cottage industries making wood furniture and temple statue replicas; a boy riding a small merry-go-round mounted on the back of a bike; greengrocery huts with exotic produce piled high; and deeply engorged rivers where children bathed and women in colorful headscarves did the wash. Rice paddies were filled with water to the brim and set like cloudy cut opals in blazing green fields.

      For a warm-up, we stopped at Prambanan, a temple complex close to Yogyakarta built shortly after Borobudur, but architecturally more like Angkor Wat, with five artichoke-shaped stupas. The earthquake-damaged compound, partly covered by shaky bamboo scaffolding, looked as if it could collapse in the next tremor.

      Noor said “hati hati,” which means “be careful” in Indonesian, then waited while I climbed the central stupa and paid my respects to a ten-foot tall statue of the Hindu god Shiva with four hands and a third eye in the center of his forehead. Together with Buddhist Borobudur, this chiefly Hindu place of worship testifies that theological mélange was in the air on Java during the Middle Ages, with the two faiths bleeding into each other until Islam took root around 1400.

      The Yogyakarta region, with a population of about 3 million, is the only Indonesian province still ruled by a sultan, a special status recognizing the role the region played in the war for independence against the Dutch. The city is now home to several universities, which give it a smart, young air. But its center remains Sultan Hamengkubuwana’s palace (or kraton), a walled, white-washed compound of open-air pavilions with its own bank, military garrison, museum of mostly hideous gifts given to sultans, 20 vehicles in the royal garage, and 75 birdcages.

      On a tour arranged by Noor, an official palace guide pointed out the décor’s myriad male and female symbols and told me that the present sultan has just one wife and five daughters, unlike his father, another Hamengkubuwana, who had 21 children with four concubines.

      Afterward, I caught a bicycle cab (or becek), the most common, cheap, and practical form of transportation in teeming Yogyakarta, down the long, distracting hurly-burly of Malioboro Road. Lined by tightly packed rows of buildings with Dutch stepped gables, New Orleans-style balconies, galleries full of food, and souvenir vendors—all cheerfully suffering the effects of recent earthquakes and tropical desuetude—this main street quickly became one of my favorite places to shop in the world. I bought light cotton shirts and trousers for about $5 at the Matahari department store, a bouquet of camellias from a flower stall, cheap batik scarves on display on the pavement, and a basket in the dark local market.

      I stayed for two nights at a hotel with a sign that said it had hot water on Sosrowijayan Street just off Malioboro, an enclave for scruffy-looking backpackers. Pedestrian alleyways off Sosrowijayan are full of countertop tour agencies, cheap guest houses, and cafes selling second-hand copies of Erich Segal’s Love Story, Rick Steves’ 1986 guide to Europe, Western-style breakfasts, and uniformly terrible coffee. Unwilling to accept that you can’t get a good cup of Joe on the island of Java, I roamed widely around the soulful, animated city, never finding it but filling my new basket with additional treasures.

      Finally, it was time for the main event: Borobudur, a few hours by van from Yogyakarta. In rice paddies, corn fields, and coconut plantations, near a ramshackle village strung along a bumpy road, it is one of the least touristy UNESCO World Heritage Sites I’ve visited. I didn’t see a single hotel until we entered the temple gate and parked at a cluster of low buildings set around beds of orange cannas. This turned out to be the Manohara guest house, originally built for researchers and architectural historians, who completed a major renovation of the temple in 1983 meant to keep it standing for another 1,000 years. Now open to travelers, the guest house provides a welcome drink of Coca-Cola with tamarind, modest rooms, good food in an open-air dining room, a video introduction to Borobudur, and easy access to the temple, especially for people who want to see it at sunrise.

      We arrived in the late afternoon, under heavy black clouds threatening a downpour. Nevertheless, I headed straight for the temple, hidden by trees until the very threshold. Then Borobudur made its appearance, a great layer cake of mottled grey stone supporting a mountain of needle-pinnacled stupas.

      The arched staircases from level to level are treacherously steep, overlooked by gaping-mouthed gargoyle water spouts, nymphs (or apsaras), dancing arms akimbo, and niches enshrining Buddha figures, each with hands in different symbolic poses (or mudras). His life story unfolds on the middle level, starting at the left side of the east entrance, with stone panels of great vividness, recalling the medieval Bayeux tapestry in France. I ran my hand over a carving of Queen Maya in a carriage headed for Lumbini Park, where she gave birth to the Buddha.

      Just then a bolt of thunder thwacked, à la Macbeth, and guards began herding visitors to a gate far from the one I’d entered. When I told one of them that I needed to get back to the Manohara, he offered to take me there on his motor scooter, the ride of a lifetime circumnavigating the temple.

      That night, I watched the Borobudur video; had a satay dinner at the restaurant, accompanied by gamelan music, and claimed a flashlight at the front desk for my sunrise visit to Borobudur. I slept soundly, without the interruptions I normally experience on the eve of a great event.

      Dawn was still an hour away when I joined a small group of guests in the lobby and followed a guide across the lawn to the temple. He made no comment; there was nothing to say—except, perhaps, “hati hati.”

      This time, I climbed to the top levels, which are round, not rectangular, and bare except for their forest of stupas, perforated to allow peeks at Buddha statues inside.

      Experts say that Borobudur’s more abstract upper precincts, especially its empty central stupa, reflect nirvana, a state of being beyond human consciousness. But how could they know? How could anyone know, even sitting atop the temple watching the sunrise pool in a pink halo around soon-to-erupt Mt. Merapi, leaving the mystery of the cosmos secure.

      If there is a keyhole anywhere, I’d wager it’s at Borobudur.

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