Potatoes maketh the mosque

After a few days in Solo, I headed up into the hills for a cool climate respite. To Central Java's Dieng Plateau, to be precise. It's a few hours by bus north west of Yogyakarta, and it's about 2000m above sea level.












Because of the cooler climate, the Dieng Plateau is ideal for growing several crops that don't come easily in most of Indonesia. Potatoes especially. They also grow cabbages, onions, and a South American fruit - carica - that I'd not heard of before, but which all the domestic tourists buy up as souvenirs.











It seems the Dieng Plateau has done extremely well from its cool climate crops. A measure of a region's prosperity is the state of its mosques, and Dieng village's new one is something to behold. That's a rather beautiful little mosque!

The crops are heavily irrigated and often grown on beautiful terraced hillsides. The workers are all extraordinarily friendly and welcoming of my photography. When I got temporarily lost in a cabbage patch, I was soon rescued by a group of friendly cabbage patch ladies, who sent me off in the right direction again.