To try and put words to just how much I love Indonesia is tricky.  Was it just the right place at the right time during my trip?  Was it the charmed friendships one has in the tropics?  Was it the light hearted happiness and laughter of just about every Indonesian person I met? 

Possibly it was living a pirate’s life sailing between volcanic islands, each of which seemed the pictorial definition of exotic.  All of these reasons were contributing factors for sure, but if I close my eyes and drift back through memory to Indonesia my heart beats a little faster, I can feel the sand, smell the salt, and I want to plunge back into the adventure that waits. That is the source of my love for Indonesia, nature’s promise of unexplored places and raw adventure.  Never before have I experienced adventure in this pure of a form, it surrounds every one of the 17,000 islands as completely and unpredictably as the shifting ocean currents swirl between the smoking peaks.

Exotic animals, lush jungles, uninhabited paradises, volcanoes, and the waters… ohhh the waters!  The ocean takes on a chromatic range of blues and greens around Indonesia that can only be rivaled by the settings sun’s passion for oranges and reds. It might be possible to resist Indonesia’s charms, but I gave in without resistance.

For those of you who may have been following my sporadic ramblings, you might be thinking, Pete sure is a bit fickle with his passion for places.  Why just a few posts ago he professed and undying love for India.  Is Pete some sort of traveling two-timer? So easily tempted by some tropical islands that he has already forgotten India?  It’s a fair question I suppose and the answer I have is this.

My love for India remains undiminished, unadulterated by this new love because their sources spring from different places.  My love for India is from the mind, the heart, and the soul.  A love soaked into all those places captivated by culture, the teachings of mankind, the mysteries of society (both ancient and modern).  India changed my life because it changed my outlook on so many things.  The spirit of India shifted my faith in humanity to a new place and revealed the deepest well of hope. This well does not run dry in the desperation of extreme poverty, in the anguish of caste fatalism, or in the tumultuous task of building a new nation.  This well, I hope, will not run dry in the face of the disconnectedness and material disillusions that we bombard our senses with in the west.  I will be forever connected to this well and armed with its strength, I feel better equipped to fight the apathy born of the limitless choices in the west.  I’m hoping it will quell the desire for massive consumption and the acquisition of silly things we squander so much money and time on in the west.  Time will tell.
*Disclaimer: Ridiculously priced camera equipment that I don’t really need doesn’t count.

My love for Indonesia is very different; it’s very corporal.  While the intangible parts of me are forever India’s, every fiber of my physical body craves Indonesia.  Her chromatic waters, her fuming mountain tops, her tropical sun which paints the body with such heat that nighttime takes on the feeling of another season.  Then there is also the people who seemed permanently wired for smiles and laughter and I can’t help but love them for it. Indonesia is nature calling to man from her most primal parts and challenging him to seek out the secrets of physical world. 

The very center of the earth is exposing its molten self in Indonesia and the awesome magnitude of nature’s beauty and power is on exhibit in all directions. Swimming, surfing, sailing diving, trekking, fishing, for someone who loves the outdoors it’s enough to paralyze you with possibilities. Temptation is unabashedly brazen in Indonesia, and not unlike Mr. Wilde, “I can resist anything but temptation”.

With this realization that I’m dividing my affections I know I should feel torn, possibly guilty…but I don’t.  I now realize that my romance with this world will have numerous facets and I shouldn’t try and pick favorites.  In this world, and in this life, I’m convinced that it is not required we only love one small patch of earth, or one society must be chosen above all others.  So I will go on hopeless and at the mercy of the two.

Did ya buy all that?  Cause I might have some very difficult explaining to do next time I see India 

-Pete

See my full photo galleries of Indonesia

Indonesia – Snapshots

Indonesia Gallery – Pete Niesen Photography