The real pride of Bogor is the Kebun Raya, or Bogor Botanical Garden, which covers a beautiful 87 hectares next to the palace compound. It was founded in 1817, by the Prussian-bom, Dutch government naturalist Caspar Reinwardt, with the help of two Englishmen from Kew Gardens. This institution was in the forefront of the Victorian colonial enterprise of documenting, classifying, taming and transforming tropical nature. And harries ing it for profit; the cultuurstelsel crops were tested and improved here, and the oil palm from Africa (1848) and Hevea rubber from Brazil (1883) were introduced. Plantation magnates showered the gardens with funds to keep their money trees pest-free. Bogor is still one of the world's foremost botanical institutions, with 17,000 living specimens from all over Indonesia and the world. The Museum Herbarium Bogoriensis and Bogor Zoological Museum, as well as extensive library and laboratory facilities, are located on the same site. The gardens, with their ponds and quiet groves, are also favorite venues for picnickers and lovers. The busy, muddy town of Bogor itself has simply sprouted up around the Kebun Raya, and it is the home of one of the few remaining gamelan gongsmiths on Java.

Beyond Bogor is the Tatar Sunda, the rugged plateau of the Sundanese heartland and the home of the Sundanese arts. The elements are those of Java, but the balance is different. The Sundanese have their own gamelan, but they are better known for the more rustic tones of the kecapi (a type of lute), angk1ung (a device of bamboo tubes suspended in a frame and shaken, with an almost metallic hollow sound) and suling (a soft-toned flute), often accompanying a dreamy female voice. The wayang golek, a prosaic but charming three-dimensional wooden version of the wayang Wit shadow play, is also known further east, but it is closest to the Sundanese heart. In performance, the romance of the Ramayana is preferred here over the philosophy of the Mahabharata. The jaipongan is a popular Sundanese dance event in which men pay to dance opposite a professional woman performer, very suggestively, but without touching her.

This area was formerly famous for its coffee, which became "Java coffee" to Europe and America. As early as the 1720s, the VOC forced the Sundanese peasantry to pay tax in coffee beans; this archaic imposition was not completely abolished until 1917. In the 20th century, the place of coffee was largely taken by tea. At Puncak ("Peak"), the highest part of the dizzy road from Bogor to the plateau, the hillsides are fragrant with tea. Women pickers still sweat to harvest this valuable crop, sometimes with their children on their backs. Incredibly, another important source of income in this 1900 meter-high mountain pass is fish: ikan mas (big carp) are kept in countless fishponds and smaller fish are kept in the shallow water of seasonally empty ricefields. At Cipanas there is a famous volcanic spa where the mountains disgorge sulfureous water at a hot 43' C. Many governors-general have sworn by its restorative powers and their country house still stands here. Not far away is the Cibodas Botanical Garden, a high-altitude extension of the gardens at Bogor, and beyond that are the forested peaks of two volcanoes that comprise the magnificent Mt. Gede Pangrango National Park.

The most isolated and unchanged part of the Sundalands is the westernmost massif, straddling the kabupaten of Banten and Priangan Barat. At its center is the vast, rarely visited, Mt. Halimun Reserve, with its many trails to various tea plantations. On the western slopes is a cluster of settlements inhabited by the intriguing Badui people, a remnant of old Sunda which resisted Islamization by the drastic expedient of isolating itself almost completely from the outside world, both by distance and a series of strict taboos against travel and contact with strangers. The 40 families - never more of white-robed "Inner Badui" acquired a cultish aura of secrecy and magic which kept outsiders in awe, while the more numerous black-clad "Outer Badui" acted as their ambassadors to the profane world - truly an astonishing piece of social history. The Badui area is usually reached from Rangkasbitung in the north, via the little town of Lebak where Multatuli was stationed and sacked, and where his great novel Max Havelaar was consequently set. Part of the journey to the Badui must be made on foot. No one may stay in the inner "forbidden area," for although the cult of the Badui is under heavy pressure from education, population growth and tourism, its days are not yet over. A far cry from the Badui is the Halimun massif's eastern window on ''civilization;" the seaside resort of Pelabuhan Ratu. When Sukarno stayed here, fresh bread rolls were flown in by helicopter from Bandung. At the Samudra Beach Hotel, which the late president built, one room is always kept vacant for the Queen of the South Sea, a goddess who lures swimmers to their deaths in the crashing waves of this stormy coast.

BANDUNG
In Bandung, the Dutch gave Sunda the capital it had not had since the fall of Pajajaran. The original fiefdoM of Bandung was established in 1641, by decree of Sultan Agung of Mataram, but its center was further south; the present city grew up around a Dutch administrative center established on the Great Post Road in 1811. In 1864, it became the capital of the Priangan plateau. Soon conveniently linked to Batavia by railway, it was favored by the colonials for its cool climate and fine location on the mountain-girdled bed of an ancient lake, and became a center for all kinds of Dutch activities not directly tied to the big ports. In 1916, the command of the colonial army was transfer-red here from Batavia, and Indonesia's officers are still trained here. The Bandung Institute of Technology (IBT) was opened in 1920. It is still one of Indonesia's most prestigious universities. With its comfortable bungalows and boulevards lined with flowers, Bandung was Java's most European city - even, some said, the "Paris of the East." In 1942, it was to have been the mountain stronghold which would defy Japan's onslaught; but its defenses crumbled even as the last planes took off for Australia. Today, reclaimed by the Sundanese, but contested by more than the usual mix of immigrants from other regions, it is a busy, shabby city of almost two million, that thrives on the light industries which came here in the 1970s. Bandung is the site of one of the New Order's most spectacular and controversial industrial projects, the IPTN Aircraft plant, and while the old atmosphere has succumbed to the smog, and the newer soubriquet of "City of Flowers" has not been earned, Bandung has managed to retain its historic and architectural interest, its intellectual dynamism and the institutions which make it the seat of Sundanese culture.
The ITB campus is in the north of town on J1. Ganeca; it was an out-of-town location when it was built in 1920. Architect Maclaine Pont used the traditional houses of the Mandailing Batak in North Sumatra as the model for his beautiful and functional design. Sukarno received his engineer's degree here in 1926, but not before helping to found the study club which would grow into the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI). To this day, ITB students have a reputation for outspokenness; unapproved political publications have led to trials of student leaders. Not purely a technical university, ITB has an art gallery which is open to the public. Other 1920s buildings include the venerable Gedung Sate (1920) on JI. Diponegoro as well as the Geological Museum, opened by the Dutch in 1929, across the street. Nearby is Bandung's tallest and most striking postwar building, the new local government headquarters, that many think looks like some kind of futuristic water tower.
building, is the Gedung Merdeka on the same street - not for its crude, inter-war, civic architecture, but because it was the venue for a grand diplomatic event: the first Asia-Africa Conference, in 1955. Here Sukarno played host to Nehru, Nasser and Ho Chi Minh, and laid the foundations of today's Non-Alligned Movement amid the euphoria of that seemingly distant time of falling empires. "Bandung spirit builds the world anew," blazed a giant slogan from the building's eaves, while the armed Darul Islam rebels watched from the hills and the country lurched towards bankruptcy. Also known as the Asia-Africa Building, Gedung Merdeka houses an interesting museum of photos and other memorabilia from the conference.
Just west of Bandung is the prewar army town of Cimahi; nearby, the Tarum river, Sunda's largest, passes over spectacular falls. About 50 kilometers down river, the Tarurn flows into the huge Jatiluhur Reservoir, where a Frenchbuilt dam and hydroelectric station feed Jakarta's and West Java's ever-growing demand for water and power.

North of Bandung, Dutcb-style flower gardens, vegetable plots and even dairy farms grace the slopes of some of Java's highest volcanoes in homely defiance of the wild tropical backdrop. A very Asian use has been found here for fancy European livestock: the locals have discovered that ram-fighting is even more exciting than cockfighting. Here, too, are the famous spa resorts of Ciater, with almost Roman-looking hot baths, and Maribaya. Lembang's Grand Hotel opened its doors in 1926. The best-known summit of this massif is the readily accessible Tangkuban Prahu, with its three craters of blasted boulders and boiling mud.

Even more dramatic landscapes lie on the opposite, southern side of Bandung, though at a greater distance. Thirty kilometers southwest of Ciwidey, is a beautiful cold mountain lake that resembles a Scottish loch. The town itself is a living center of blacksmithing (agricultural tools, as well as decorative knives), something of a rarity even in tribal Sumatra. Mt. Papandayan, about 60 kilometers southeast of Bandung via the tea town of Pengalengan, is a bigger, angrier Tangkuban Prahu.

There are two routes from Bandung to the east: the old Great Post Road, which returns to the north coast, and a quieter southern route which ultimately winds its way to Yogyakarta. The first town on the southern road is Garut, a favorite mountain resort in colonial times, now a quintessentially Sundanese country town which features some of the last pile houses in Java. Sunda retained the old pre-Hindu, Malay-like design long after the houses of Java proper came down to earth, but "Javanization," snobbery and the price of timber are putting an end to now. North of Garut, at Lake Cangkuang, near Leles, is West Java's only significant Hindu temple, imaginatively restored in the 1970s. Perversely (or perhaps appropriately, in syncretic Indonesia), next to the temple is the grave of Arif Muhammad, the pioneer of Islam in the area. The Garut region is even more volcanically active than points west. In 1982, it suffered badly from a series of major eruptions from Mt. Galunggung, east of Garut, which covered the countryside in a searing, black blizzard of ash. In Kawah Talagabodas, the crater of Galunggung's less deadly twin, a spectacular green sulfereous lake can be seen. After Garut, the next major stop is Tasikmalaya, famous for its woven craft products in rattan, pandanus and bamboo. Tasikmalaya also has a batik industry; the traditional designs are similar to those of Central Java.

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