Five Homestay Cakra residents - Wayu (Homestay owner and driver), Dodi (gofer and guide), Doug and Nerese (guests from Oxford; in Solo for the month while Doug receives gamelan tuition), and myself - went on a daytrip yesterday to Candi Cetha (aka Ceto) and Candi Sukuh, two step-pyramidal temples on the slopes of Gunung (Mount) Lawu.
The 9am expedition started on what Dodi called "Java time" - in other
words you could drink a few cups of coffee before the 10am-ish departure. Once we reached the often hideously steep tea-bush-covered slopes of Gunung Lawu, Wayu gunned the minibus as though he were driving a rally car. The minibus had seatbelts
but unfortunately both of them were in the front, so it was a matter of
hanging on and hoping that his skill and tyres matched
his enthusiasm.
At Candi Cetha we debarked - unsteadily. The air was cool (twas cold for Dodi and Wayu,
but refreshing for me as at its coldest Solo has still been _warm_),
the horizon was buried in fog, and rain was intermittent and heavy. It
was very much a farming district; not only was there the acres and
acres of tea mentioned earlier, but just beside the temple there were
people carrying baskets of cabbages past rows of carrots, and when it
stopped raining the scent of something citrus-y could be detected.
The two temples are complementary. Candi Cetha is architecturally detailed but decoratively light. Candi Sukuh the converse. Candi Sukuh
is promoted for its "erotic carvings" though in fact only some of its
carvings are of an explicitly sexual nature - others detail scenes from
the Ramayana and others are of gods, mortals, and animals (there are
turtles at both temples...). In Candi Cetha there are a few statues, but there are multiple tiers before the pyramid, and each has a yoni-like
gateway, so that you can stand at the bottom and look through all of
them to the pyramid, or crouch at the passage at the top of the pyramid
and see down through the gateways to the road down the mountain beyond.
Though their steps are both narrow, the pyramids are different too. Sukuh's
is taller and much steeper - some of the steps are nearly half a meter
high and I used my hands on the next step at times. Unlike CC, which has a wall and an altarstone metres tall, the top of CS is flat and unadorned save for carved graffiti. CS is busy, CS is quiet. CS manicured in its greenery, while CC only has a little lawn at one of the lower tiers.
