Tour Destinations

Java

About Java

Java Island is the cultural, political and also spiritual center of Indonesia. The boarders of the nowadays country of Indonesia have been based on the Javanese Hindu and Buddhist Empire of Majapahit, destroyed by the arrival of Islam during the fifteenth century.

Java has influenced and often ruled, for more than 1000 years, the whole archipelago of Indonesia (under local or colonial government like under the Dutch times) and been the land of the first inhabitants of South East Asia as proven by the findings of Dutch Eugene Dubois in 1890 of bones of a Pithecanthropus Erectus, the "man of Java", considered to be the missing link between humans and our ancestors, the monkeys.

This is why it is impossible to get to know the country without going to Java and look after its brilliant civilization’s cultural roots.

Bali, the more famous neighboring island, is in fact a living museum of what was pre-Islamic Java, as underlined by Raffles, the famous English governor of the East Indies, during the nineteenth century. The main part of the Balinese are in fact Javanese people who escaped from the growing ruling power of Islam on their motherland -Java- and moved their rich and endangered culture to an island not much inhabited at that time-Bali.

The Balinese still consider Java as the spiritual center of their faith and many of them do pilgrims to Borobudur, Prambanan, Trowulan and other Hindu and Buddhist temples, and climb some sacred volcanoes like Bromo and Semeru to reinforce their spirituality.

The "kejawen" beliefs which are the Javanese old way of practicing a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and animism are indeed still alive in many places in Java. Those roots of Javanese identity make Islam a very moderate version of the Middle East one. Javanese people are friendly, traditionally open minded as proven by their syncretism spiritual life.

Java is a much bigger island than Bali though still much smaller than the islands of Sumatra and Borneo for example. While Jakarta, the capital, and West-Java have not much to offer to tourism, the region of Jogjakarta and Center-Java and East-Java as a whole are great places to wander around. If you avoid the big cities and escape from the few mass tourism places you will be able to enjoy an overwhelming discovery of a little visited island.

Java in Comparisons

The very good points about Java

• Amazing cultural heritage (Borobudur and Prambanan temples for instance)
• Great opportunities for volcanoes' climbing and trekking
• Fair and sometimes even very good hotel industry
• Almost unspoiled by mass tourism
• Very soft way of practicing Islam
• It has got some tiny virgin islands which are the perfect "Robinson Crusoe fantasy" and we can bring you there!

The less good points about Java

• It needs at least 10 days to visit the island. If you plan to spend less time, you would have to wisely choose between the region of Jogjakarta or East-Java but avoid doing them all together
• The main roads can be very busy and the towns polluted and hot
• Not many diving opportunities and only few great beaches (but we know where they are!)

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