Borobudur Temple

Lonely Planet review

Java's Borobudur is one of the continent's marvels, surviving damage from volcanoes, terrorist bombs and hordes of tourists. Built from two million stone blocks in the form of a massive symmetrical stupa literally wrapped around a small hill, this colossal Buddhist relic remains as enigmatic and beautiful as it must have been 1200 years ago.

The paintwork is long gone, but it's thought that the grey stone of Borobudur was at one time washed with a colour to catch the sun.

Viewed from the air, the structure resembles a colossal three-dimensional tantric mandala. It has been suggested, in fact, that the people of the Buddhist community that once supported Borobudur were early Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhists who used it as a walk-through mandala.

The monument was conceived as a Buddhist vision of the cosmos in stone, starting in the everyday world and spiralling up to nirvana - the Buddhist heaven. At the base of the monument is a series of reliefs representing a world dominated by passion and desire, where the good are rewarded by reincarnation as a higher form of life, while the evil are punished by a lowlier reincarnation. These carvings and their carnal scenes are covered by stone to hide them from view, but they are partly visible on the south side.

If you look south from the temple, you'll see a mountain range running across the horizon that looks uncannily like a reclining Buddha. The feet are at the western end, the head at the eastern and the rest is imagination.

The finest time to see Borobudur and capture something of the spirit of the temple is at dawn or sunset, but you won't have it to yourself. These are popular times for the bus loads of tour groups to visit Borobudur. The temple is usually at its quietest during Ramadan.