life in the shadow of the smokey mountain  2

Mount Merapi is an active volcano in Yogyakarta (Jogja), Indonesia. It blew last a couple of years ago.
the villagers are very proud of the fact that no one died in the eruption, nor was there major disruption to livelihood or major damage to property.
the reason being that they adopted good practices from Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).
Prevention is always better than cure – and the confidence that it gives local communities that they can battle the elements and win is huge.

old & young

In the village at the foothills of the Volcano, a grandmother and her grandson watch us shoot

water filing

The water supply for the village is from natural springs that arise near the volcano. Plastic pipes deliver it to the village, and plastic pots (and women) deliver it to the house

foggy mountains

the mountains on the other side – the day we visited, it was over cast and cloudy. Terrace planting or ‘Terasering’ – is a speed breaker for oncoming Lava. at the same time it prevents soil erosion !

more on Jogja in a few days. for now the footage is getting edited !

5 thoughts on “Memories of Jogja – At the foot of Mount merapi

  1. Now I am feeling bad to have given Jogjakarta the miss when we spent a week in Bali exactly a year back.
    Ah well! 100 places.. (now 101 🙂 ) places to see before I die.

  2. Harini (btw, do you prefer being called Harini or Gargi?),

    The first photograph is just too good. Did you photoshop it? The colors and contrast are unbelievable. Magnificent!

  3. @anindya – the place is gorgeous. i want to go back there. and maybe look at bali from there. there are more pics coming up of the city, the countryside and the ‘ramayana’ temple and borobodur.

    @mahendra – harini, please. gargi is my second name -and i only use it for blogging 🙂
    not photoshop. shot raw and used adobe lightroom to process it. but, the colours are more or less like what it was to the eye 🙂

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