Prambanan – Indonesia’s Hindu past

We bused to Prambanan one afternoon to the ninth century Hindu temple. It was hot and sticky and the bus crowded, but the site was only twenty kilometres from Jogyakarta.

At the time, I was amazed how people walked over this monumental structure that was more than a thousand years old. Coming from a country where no buildings dated more than 200 years, it took me years to realize, this wasn’t any different from walking inside Salisbury Cathedral.

Luckily, I was digging through a box for research on Uganda (for my next novel) and discovered an old exercise book where I’d written about this trip. I thought we’d visited the beach south of Jogya; how our memory can play tricks on us. No, we’d done a bit more shopping. While I’d given up finding green batik in Jogya as most on offer was brown, my daughter must have wanted to search for another gem: a wristband, a fake brand watch; I can’t remember.

Prambanam’s – ancient Hindu temple