We went to great lengths to find and lug along a fat book on the birds of Indonesia. Somehow I missed the fact that 110 million people live on this island the size of New York State. It is one of the planet's most crowded places. I missed the fact that Java is so incredibly crowded that the government is shipping whole villages away to other islands. We stare right into people's lives.
Ancient huts squeeze together with tiny homes under construction.
My impression is that families have never moved but just keep building on. There is not a square inch of uncultivated land. It doesn't take a guidebook to know that the awesome beauty of the terraced hills could only have come from centuries of attention. I've never been so aware of the difference between the Old World and the New. J follows the route with maps and guidebooks, always wanting to know where we are.