Island of empires
A rail journey through ancient Java
Hello from Surabaya! The second largest city in Indonesia, Surabaya will serve as the starting point for my journey through the history of Java. Over the next two weeks I’ll visit some of the most fabled locations in the long, complex history of Indonesia. Unlike last year’s jeep expedition through Wallacea, though, this trip will be done by train — in comparison, a very civilized way to travel.
I flew into Surabaya from Lombok, bypassing a land journey through overcrowded Bali, in part because I’ve made that trip before — long ago (1993) on my first visit to Indonesia, when I drove from Denpasar to Yogyakarta in the era before toll highways. While there is much to see in Bali itself and far eastern Java, this time I’m focused on the core region of Javanese history.
I won’t be visiting any of the major tourist attractions on this trip, for two reasons. First, it’s the peak of the tourist season here in Indonesia, and places like Mount Bromo, Borobudur and Prambanan will be packed to the rafters. I’ve also visited these places several times, and don’t really need to see them again. Rather, this is a journey to see a long list of places I’ve accumulated over the past few years until I found the right time to stitch them together in a single journey. That time is now.
Surabaya is an appropriate place to begin my trip, since it serves as the historical gateway to the greatest empire in medieval Indonesia, the Majapahit. It’s a fascinating city that isn’t immediately likable (think heavy traffic, hot weather — noticeably hotter than Lombok — and historic buildings that could use some TLC and a splash of paint), but it grows on you. I’m staying at the wonderful Majapahit Hotel, built in 1910 by Lucas Martin Sarkies, of the famed Sarkies family that built some of the most iconic hotels in colonial Southeast Asia. Of these, four survive today: the Majapahit, the Eastern & Oriental in Penang, the Strand in Yangon, and the crown jewel, Raffles in Singapore. These grandes dames of the region are well worth visiting and staying in, though Raffles has become prohibitively expensive in the past couple of decades.
From here I’ll be visiting Trowulan, the ancient Majapahit capital, followed by the city of Malang, with its temples and genteel Dutch colonial architecture. From there I’ll travel onward to Blitar, a small provincial town with the most important Majapahit temple on its northern outskirts. It’s also the hometown of Indonesia’s founding father and first president, Soekarno (known locally as Bung Karno), who is buried there.
After Blitar I’ll travel on to Solo (Surakarta), along with nearby Yogyakarta the remaining core of Central Java’s courtly life. It is also the location of one of Indonesia’s ten world heritage sites, the Sangiran Early Man site, where some of the most important finds in the study of human prehistory were discovered in the 20th century.
After Solo it’s on to Yogyakarta to see a few of the lesser-known temples built by the mighty Mataram Kingdom, and to pay a visit to the paleoanthropology museum at Gadjah Mada University, which has played such an important role in the study of Indonesia’s ancient human remains. Next I’ll travel on to Bandung, another colonial-era oasis nestled in the mountains of western Java. It was also famously the location of the 1955 Asian-African Conference, which codified the notion of a post-colonial ‘Global South’ that’s so much in the news today. Finally, from Bandung I’ll take the new high-speed rail to Jakarta — the fastest train in Southeast Asia, which opened in October of 2023. Whoosh!
Along the way I’ll be taking notes and photographs, and shooting drone video, and will be discussing the historical and scientific context of the locations in a series of posts after I return to Lombok. So with that as an introduction, let’s hop on the train!
Bromo looks like Mars! Beautiful photo.
Looking forward to readiing about your journey. Raffles Hotel before they spent fortunes of money on it was a blast!