Borobudur

Following the same path that Meghan, Liz and I took last year, Martha and I hopped the train to Jogjakarta once our Jakarta adventures were over:

The train ride was (thankfully) uneventful, save for a lot of knitting and a lot of beautiful scenery:

Once the train reached Jogja, we met up with Mr. Tim, who opted to fly, and drove directly out Borobudur, the 9th century Buddhist temple.  

Stumbling out of our hotel room in the early morning dark, we made our way to the temple and hiked up the steep and uneven stairs to see sunrise from the top:

Even though I'd seem the sunrise from the temple once before, it was still pretty beautiful and haunting to see the sun shining through the volcanoes and stupas:

Martha and Tim seemed pretty enchanted, too:

The obligatory sunrise tour sarongs got a nice update the from the brown and black ones they had last year... the new sarongs feature a batik version of Borobudur's iconic stupas:

Stupas, stupas, stupas:

Sigh... so beautiful:

The next four shots are Tim's take on the scene... morning mist, shining sun, Buddha hiding in a stupa, and his masterpiece, Buddha surveying the pastel landscape, for which we awarded him the blue ribbon for best photo of the day:

Here's my less-impressive shot of the same Buddha:

Once the sun was fully up, we wandered around the lower terraces of the temple, checking out the hundreds of bas reliefs:

We (well, Tim) made some friends while looking at the temple from below... Tim was due for his round with the local paparazzi:

 All in all a great trip to Borobudur... I can't recommend the sunrise tour enough!