MAGELANG ~

Elephant rides are a favorite among both domestic and foreign tourists visiting Borobudur Temple, the world’s largest Buddhist Temple, located in Magelang, Central Java Province.

Five elephants are ready to entertain the tourists interested in riding them to tour Borobudur Temple or just around Lumbini Park, Aryono Hendro Malyanto of the Borobudur Temple Tourism Park (TWCB) stated here, recently.

Some elephant tourism packages are offered to tourists at a fee of up to Rp1.5 million per person.

The tourists are taken on a ride through the green rice fields in Tanjung Sari Village and later through Nglipoh Village, which is known for its earthenware craft industry.

The elephants will also take the tourists to Kali Tengah traditional market and Nampan Village, where the scenery is dominated by rice fields.

“Mostly foreign tourists are interested to opt for the ride as it is quite costly,” he noted.

Some 10 to 100 tourists daily opt for the elephant ride around Borobudur Temple.

In the meantime, the TWCB management has been promoting the world’s largest Buddhist temple overseas to lure foreign tourists.

“We still rely on overseas promotional activities to attract foreign tourists,” Malyanto added.

The promotional activities have been carried out in cooperation with the Indonesian embassies and the tourism ministry.

This week, a promotional event is being organized in India, which is hosting an International Ramayana Festival in New Delhi.

“In March, we will hold promotional activities in the Netherlands and Germany,” he noted.

Some 211,004 foreign tourists visited Borobudur Temple in 2014.

The largest number of tourists came from the Netherlands, with 42,096 people, followed by Japan 38,543; Malaysia 26,531; and France 25,608.

The huge mountain temple of Borobudur was built during the reign of a king of the Saliendra Dynasty between A.D. 750 and 842.

Located about 42 kilometers from the city of Yogyakarta, Borobudur is one of the greatest Buddhist monuments in the world and was included on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1991, as mentioned by UNESCO on its official website.