Dieng Plateau
We could visit to
Dieng Plateau. This 2,091 meter high
plateau southwest of Semarang is the site of some of Java’s oldest and starkest
Shivaite temples. The temples and what remains of a drainage system, scattered
over a wide area , are believed to have been part of a big monastery.The Dieng
Plateau is actually a huge crater floor filled with dubbling mud pools and
furning cracks. The rugged majestry of the area 6.000 meters high in the sky is
most impressive. The road to the plateau leads to tobacco plantations and
bucolic fields.
An ancient
pilgrim’s retreat, the Dieng Plateau is the geographic center of Java as well
as the highest inhabitable region. The plateau was formed by the eruption of a
huge volcano many millenia ago but remains active until today. Dotted with
Hindu-Buddhist Temple ruins and lying in the caldera of an extinct volcano,
Dieng is charged with mystic significance for the Javanese. Surrounded by
jagged, mist-shrouded mountains and with temperatures falling to single
figures, Dieng is more like Peru or Tibet than tropical Java.
The hardly
inhabitants of the plateau, drapped in heavy cloting, carry loads of firewood
and farm produce up precipitous mountain tracks. The remarkable Dieng temples,
which lie among the plateau’s lush vegetable and flower fields, could be
visited on foot. Dieng, a silent mountain plateau with it’s eerie strangeness
and proximity to the heavens is aptly called the Abode of the Gods. Dramatic
mountain scenery, tobacco and tea plantation, beauty of Lame Warna in Dieng.
And also Dvaravati Temple, Semar Temple, Arjuna Temple, Pantadewa Temple,
Srikandi Temple, Sembrada Temple, Gatutkaca Temple, and Bima temple.
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