BOROBUDUR - a true Wonder
One of the benefits of living in an industrial suburb of a small town in Indonesia was the opportunity we got to visit some very exotic sites , scattered around Central Java. One of them was BOROBUDUR. The data about Borobudur : A World Heritage Site . The Largest Buddhist Stupa in the world. " The Temple With No Inside" . Built between 740 and 852 AD ( the precise years as given by Britannica) during the reign of King Samaratungga of Shailendra Dynasty. Seismic activity ( or a war or cultural shift) caused total abandonment in around 950 AD ; swallowed by jungle and forgotten till 1814 when Stanford Raffles rediscovered the humongous rubble. Painstaking, continuous restoration by various nationalities .... Opened for pilgrimage and tourism in 1973. The monument is built like a stone ( lava-rock) cladding over a natural hill ( hence, "no Inside") in Central Java, not very far from the holy volcano Merapi. It is 9 tiered,(six of th...