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Indonesia’s an interesting country where traditions and culture happily live cheek by jowl with modernization. Where karaoke lounges, glass-and-steel office buildings and loud nightclubs stand alongside old temples and colonial buildings dating back to the time when Jakarta was called Batavia. Indonesia has its fair share- in fact perhaps more than its fair share- of cities of more historical and cultural value- cities like Surakarta or Solo, with its amazingly beautiful palaces, or Yogyakarta, with its famous temples and palaces. In Indonesia there are settlements, which still retain the beauty of colonial days -Bandung, with it’s quaint old-world charm and its distinctive Dutch art-deco architecture, lives up pretty well to its reputation as the ‘Paris of Java’. And there are places in Indonesia, which are so beautiful- naturally- that even without attractions like monuments and history, they’re worth a visit. The world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia with its mind-bending diversity has something to offer to every kind of traveller.

Indonesia lies on the Pacific belt referred to as the 'Ring of Fire'. The most active volcanoes in the region are found in Indonesia. Indonesia is home to over a 100 volcanoes!

Historically Speaking

Over 17000 islands make up the archipelago of Indonesia. It sprawls across the seas around 5,200 miles from the Asian mainland to Pacific Ocean .The islands are generously endowed with nature’s bounty and beauty and are as rich in natural resources as they are beautiful. These riches proved to be an irresistible attraction for all manners of people from Dutch, Portuguese and British seafarers to Hindu and Muslim kings who established their kingdoms in the islands. Indonesia became home to a lot of settlers who were happy to put down roots and assimilate with the locals, as a consequence, modern Indonesia has a cultural heritage rich in its very diversity. Along with the invading armies and merchants came evangelists, proselytizers and missionaries who converted the locals from one religion to the other – so, you find Hindus, Muslims and Christians in Indonesia. Today, this religious diversity is causing a lot of stress as movements for independence are sprouting across the islands dividing a people who lived together in relative harmony till not so long back.

Habitat

13,000 to 17,000 islands sprinkled across 5000 miles of ocean span the distance between the two continents of Asia and Australia makes Indonesia a potpourri of people, languages, topography and cultures. Indonesia has an area of 767,777 square miles (1,919,443 sq. km) scattered over the islands. The country also claims sovereignty over 1,308,864 square miles (3,272,160 sq. km) of sea stretching from Asia to Australia. An active volcanic arc runs through Sumatra, Java and the islands of Nusa Tenggara, and then north through Maluku to Sulawesi. It marks the place where tectonic plates plunge one beneath the other making this area one of intense volcanic activity called the "Ring of Fire." Off the coast of these islands is a deep-sea trench in places more than 7,000m deep. Within the arc is the more stable Sunda Shelf with shallow seas and less dramatic landscape. Some parts of the country remain vast, barely explored regions of dense jungle, and many islands have extinct, active or dormant volcanoes. High mountains edged with terraces of green paddy fields against a backdrop of plains, rivers, beaches and blue seas dazzling in tropical

sunshine; wildlife sanctuaries in rainforests teeming with orang utans and giant komodos brightly coloured tropical birds and all manners of reptiles add to the magic to this multifaceted country.

Flora & Fauna: Tropical moist forests are the dominant type of vegetation while tropical evergreen rainforest is the most extensive forests found in over 10% of the world total cover that Indonesia alone is home to. Monsoon forests predominate in seasonally dry areas in the southern and eastern islands). Mangrove, coastal, swamps and peat-swamp forests are the other sub types of the rain forest. Botanically, the richest areas are the forests of Kalimantan and Irian Jaya, with Kalimantan supporting the largest expanse of tropical rainforest in Southeast Asia.

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