Borobudur Golden Sunrise Tour

This is not the main temple tour of Borobudur yet. I also thought we would go to the renown Buddhist temple in Yogyakarta for sunrise but I was wrong. We availed of Golden Sunrise Package Tour through our hotel Edu Hostel where the standard rate is 85,000 Rupiah that we had to reserve the night before. We had to leave the hotel at 4:00am. The hotel car was already waiting for us at the lobby when we went downstairs. The rate is per pax and we had to share the ride with two other tourists since there were only three of us. The car is spacious so it was a comfortable 45-minute ride to our first destination.

Borobudur Nirwana Sunrise

Golden Sunrise at Punthuk Setumbu Hill -Borobudur 

and Mendut Temple Tour 

(6 hours) 85,000 Rupiah/pax. Leaves at 4 am.

Punthuk Setumbu is a hill located 4 km west of Borobudur Temple. It is one of the best place to watch Borobudur sunrise from an altitude of 400m above sea level.

Should we have known earlier, we would have requested our driver to take us straight to the temple. I imagined dawn breaking while climbing it, instead, we found ourselves hiking through a forest. It was still a bit dark when we arrived at the drop off point.

We quickly paid for entrance fee --5,000 Rupiah--- and followed other tourists up the hill through a path that was still damp due to light rains the night before. It was an easy climb of around 15 minutes or so.

The sun was just about to rise when we got to the summit. There were already many people there also anticipating the sun going up the horizon lighting the surrounding area. Little by little the landscape became visible with morning fog punctuating the forest cover below.

Slowly, the popular shape of Borobudor temple became visible. It was rather a miniature structure from afar and it's quite difficult to recognize unless you look carefully. At least it was recognizable because it was a bit cloudy that morning the sun never really reveled itself for a dramatic sunrise we were hoping for.

We went down a bit disappointed but still thankful it didn't rain while because it would have me disheartening if it did.

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