Gourmet Traveller
YOGYAKARTA, JAVA
Yogyakarta is the cultural heart of Java, the Land of Rice. Francis Pearce discovers a fertile region with stunning scenery, a warm, open welcome and a rich and colourful culinary heritage
Two volcanoes lie like lovers, one dormant, the other smoking, to the north of Yogyakarta where according to the Javanese calendar it is 1943. Affectionately known as Jogja, it is a city of just over half a million inhabitants near the centre of Java, 280 miles east of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and close to the Indian Ocean. It’s a Saturday morning when we arrive below the tree line of Gunung Merapi, ‘mountain of fire’, hand carts waiting to be loaded by a crocodile of tough, bow-backed women coming down the mountain almost invisible beneath ricks of freshly cut grass. On her way back up for a new load, curiosity overcomes Mardi Sihono and she stops to take a closer look at us. We are not just exotic, we’re odd: as we collect pebbles of lava from Merapi’s most recent eruption in 2006, when by some miracle, the lava parted, leaving her village – where the sultan’s volcano watcher stood his ground – unharmed. The watcher is now a national hero and makes a living endorsing products on Indonesian TV. ‘Grandpa’ Merapi is brought offerings each year on the anniversary of the sultan’s coronation. And in its own terrifying way Merapi has been generous back. There’s a living to be made on its lush flanks and the rains wash alluvium down to the land around Yogyakarta making it rich and fertile. Our eyes follow a line due south through the city, straight through the Kraton (Sultan’s Palace) complex, and on down to Depok Beach and the watery home of Ratu Laut Selatan, the mythical Queen of the South Sea, who is addressed as eyang or grandmother. As we chat, the old lady’s broad, leathery face breaks into a grin like a picked-over plate of watermelon, her gappy teeth red with betel. Then, unselfconsciously, she produces a small wad of tobacco which she uses to partially remove the betel stain – while also enhancing the betel’s stimulant effect. She is the last in her village to have the habit, she says. To Westerners of a certain vintage the word Java conjures up the dark brown brew that fuelled films noirs, to others it’s a computer language, but to the Javanese Java means the Land of Rice. Dewi Sri the rice goddess is still honoured, even in a predominantly Muslim country, and the harvest ceremony coincides with the birth of the prophet Mohammed, despite central Java having three crops a year. It seems that beliefs here are like the wax and dye batik that made the city famous: what is visible is defined by what has gone; and while animism, Buddhism and Hinduism may have had their day, they provide the underlying pattern of Javanese culture.
For the full feature, see the October issue of Food and Travel.
