A country of incredible and diverse beauty, Indonesia stretches across one-seventh of the globe between Malaysia and Australia. This Sprawling island chain encompasses min-stupefying extremes: 5,000-meter-high snowcapped mountains of Papua, sweltering lowland swamps of eastern Sumatra, open eucalyptus savannah of Timor, lush rainforests of West Java, with lava-spewing volcanos the whole length.
The archipelago astride both the Indian and Pacific oceans, has been the seedbed of unique Asian and Australasian tropical marine, animal, and plant forms. The most complex single nation on Earth, each of Indonesia’s 6,000-plus inhabited islands has customs, native dress, architecture, dialects, ethnology, and geography all its own. Its wayang puppets, unearthly gamelan music, exquisite textiles, matchless and varied cuisines, hundreds of tribes, ancient ruins and historical sites, wildlife and nature reserves and friendly people make Indonesia one of Asia’s last travel discoveries.
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