Candi Sambisari

Prambanan and Borobudur are the two well-known temples around Yogyakarta, but when I went to the city's tourism website, there is a whole list of other temples in the area. One of them is called Sambisari Temple (Candi, pronounced 'chandee', is the Indonesian word for temple). It seems that one day a farmer was out working the fields and his hoe hit something hard. Curious, he dug it out and found a rock that belonged to something. A bit more digging and he probably realized that he shouldn't have gone and done that because he was now going to have to forfeit his land to archaeological research of some sort. He had found the remnants of a temple. The antiquities department got wind of the find and came and began a dig. Eventually they had to dig down 6 or 7 meters to uncover a fine example of a Hindu temple. And they restored it and now there is a temple that is open to the public that is in a big pit. Naturally, I had to go and have a look, being such an odd quirky story. And it is quite a nice temple.

Why was it under all that dirt? Well, nearby is a volcano called Mount Merapi. You might recall the name as being the volcano that erupted in the fall of 2010. It is a very active volcano and always has been. After the Sambisari temple was built some thousand or so years ago, the volcano erupted and the resulting ash and mud and other debris covered it up.

I suspect this means that the whole area around Yogyakarta must be littered with temples waiting to be found and dug up.

Now there are no buses that go to this temple. There are no touts waiting at the nearest bus stop to try and convince tourists to take their pedi-cab to the site. There is only one sign that I saw that even points the way. I had to ask directions more than once. But it was a nice walk through the countryside and when I arrived, it was virtually empty. I had it pretty much to myself. In some ways that made it a much more satisfying experience that either of the big temples. And the countryside was quite charming to experience along the way as well.