Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

I'm sitting in a small pavilion in the almost-deserted botanical gardens, looking out towards the orchid collection. The fog of the morning became a mist, then, a drizzle, and is now a steady rain.

As I walked over the hill towards town this morning, I passed a woman praying at the shrine in front of the temple I took photos of yesterday evening. Twenty minutes or so later, she caught up with me on her motorbike. We chatted a bit about religion. She's a Hindu and a vegetarian, and wanted to know if I was a Protestant or a Catholic. When I told her I had no religion, she asked if I was an atheist, to which I responded that I guessed so. She has a friend in San Francisco, but it isn't someone I've met.

There was a ceremony in progress at the Ulan Danu water temple on the lake. Many people around dressed formally, a gamelan orchestra playing, and large offerings shaped like the shrine towers you see everywhere here, but made of food.

The garden here is less lush than the others I've been to in Indonesia, probably because of the cooler mountain climate. I think my favorite section so far was the begonia house. I hadn't realized that some of the plants I've liked a lot on past trips have been begonias. There's a spiral leaf shape that I've photographed before that was well represented there.