This is the story of me and my piece of lovely red honey bee, a 2 strokes 100cc 1977 red yamaha. At that day, we decided to go to the southern karst mountain in Yogyakarta. A 130km journey for us, the darth vader's breath of me and the old badly shape 36 years old engine. It was drizzling in the city but we decided to go anyway, it's our first pilgrimage, we were heading to the beach, but we ended up toward Mother Mary's shrine in Tritis cave in Paliyan Gunung Kidul cause we were almost running out of light, GPS Coordinate: S8°4'55.3" E110°33'24.7"
We took the Siluk-Panggang route, it took us one hour thru east Imogiri road (just south of Giwangan bus terminal) to reach the edge of the karst mountain (Siluk) from the city of Yogyakarta, well it was due to traffic and the old small engine. We took a break to catch a breath before started our hill climb. And here we went, 30 minutes of hill climb full of 2 strokes combustion oil smoke, on 20 degree climb (we assumed), climbing to elevation around 300m from around 20m from sea level. It was slow, we never thought we could make it, but we did. The scenery was beautiful, it was my bad, I concentrated too much on the hill climb I didn't manage to take proper picture. The first picture I took was after we reach Panggang (small sub district town in the Gunung Kidul District).
There's a T-junction in Panggang, to the right is to Parangtritis Beach in Bantul District to the left is to the great karst plateau of Gunung Kidul. Naturally we headed left. The road was nice, the asphalt was new, there were road construction to widened the road. Then we hit another T-junction, the right sign still indicate direction toward Parangtritis beach, and the left indicate beaches name in Gunung Kidul. We took the left again. The road just smooth, an ok road for my old companion, with small ups and downs and curvaceous typical mountain road. We found 2 T-junctions indicating beach name, Gesing beach (which I want to visit on my next trip) and Ngrenehan Ngobaran Nguyahan Beach (stunningly beautiful with an old Hindu site in the Ngobaran beach)
We continued our ride toward Baron beach road, the sign was quite clear and easy to follow, we even found a big banner indicating Novena prayer season at Tritis in the school building, with vent in a cross shape (so obvious) in a T-junction. About 500-700m from to the right from that school we found GUA MARIA TRITIS sign It's more than two hours passed by since we left Panggang mmm but with few butt rests. It was 4 pm, we stopped there. There are two entrances here, the northern entrance is for those who just want to go straight to the cave. The southern entrance is for those who want to do way of cross prayer (it was longer route with 14 prayer posts). I mistakenly took the northern route.
There were no pilgrims that day, so quiet, but en route I met a nice young couple they were student/tourist from Jogja. They didn't know the path down to the cave and asked me to accompany them, I gladly did, since I had to left my red wild honey in parking lot, I needed human to converse with. They were not even christians, they stop there out of curiosity, and I strange-fully welcome them, I was not even the host of that place.
After 15 minutes walk we reached the cave, they did what tourists should do, taking photographs, and I went sit in the chapel inside the cave. It's a small shallow limestone cave with stalagmites and stalactites, too bad most of the stalagmites were destroyed to make floor for the chapel and praying area. Can we compromise on this guys, I really dislike the destruction of the stalagmites just to make room for the pilgrims, I think I can pray just fine with the stalagmites around. But it's my personal opinion, maybe what they did is for the good of many and I just don't understand.
If you got chance to to there either as a tourist or pilgrim, don't forget to donate thru the donation box or to the bank account in the picture, I believe it would be useful for the area and the community around there.
We departed toward city about an hour near dusk, I took the road with Wonosari sign (capital of Gunung Kidul) near the school we previously saw. It was a narrower road with nice asphalt though, 20 minutes ride then suddenly potholes, the good asphalt is gone, the road was no longer able to cruise at normal 45kpj speed, we needed to zig zag to evade holes, it was old asphalt road with hundreds of potholes, sometimes there were gravel materials by the side of the road. Fuck, they haven't finished the layering project in this part of the road yet, we were running out of light, and the road was in the middle teak wood forest. We decided to move forward, no turning back, it was an adventure.You guys please take the ordinary tourism road for your convenience.
We finally reached Playen-Wonosari road, and we took the Wonosari-Yogyakarta road. On the descent to Jogjakarta, I managed to take this picture from Bukit Bintang Pathuk. Nice in the eye, bad in the camera haha. 6 hours on the road only 6 pictures? I promise next time I will make more pictures
Riding distant : 130.7km
Riding duration : 6 hours
check out the route in google map:
