Handpicked experience · Jakarta
Jakarta, Indonesia
The colonial nursery where a handful of West African seedlings became every oil palm in Southeast Asia — in the rainiest city in Indonesia.
Bogor Botanical Gardens:- One of the largest botanical gardens with an area of 87 hectares
Parahyangan Agung Temple Jagatkartta Taman Sari Gunung Salak is the biggest temple outside Bali, after Besakih Temple. This temple has Jagyangan Jagat status.
Curug Nangka or the Nangka Waterfall is a small cataract in the foothill of Mount Salak or the Silver Mountain.
A garden laid out in 1817 that reshaped the agriculture of two countries
The hill air that made the Dutch move their governor out of Batavia
Deer grazing in front of a working presidential palace
A private car held for the whole day, so the plan can change
Markets and cafés added or dropped as you like
A full day from Jakarta to Bogor with a private car and driver for up to ten hours: the botanical gardens, the palace grounds seen from the lawns, and time in the cooler air an hour south of the capital.
The gardens were laid out in 1817 and they were never merely ornamental. They were the research nursery of a colonial economy, the place where crops were brought to see whether they would take in the Indies: tea, cinchona, cassava, rubber.
The consequential one was oil palm. A handful of West African seedlings were planted here in the 1840s, thrived, and became the ancestral stock from which the plantations of Sumatra and later Malaysia were raised. Nearly every oil palm in Southeast Asia traces back to that experiment. You are walking through the place where the modern landscape of two countries was decided, by people who thought they were testing a curiosity.
Bogor is known in Indonesian as the rain city, and the name is meteorological rather than poetic — it sits under one of the highest thunderstorm frequencies recorded anywhere, with storms on the great majority of days in the year.
They arrive in the afternoon and they are heavy. This is why a Bogor day works best done early: gardens in the morning, shelter or the drive home when the sky goes dark. Your driver will know the pattern for the season and it is worth letting them shape the running order.
The white-spotted deer grazing in front of Istana Bogor descend from animals brought from Nepal in the nineteenth century, and they have been there so long that they are effectively part of the architecture. The palace interior is opened only by arrangement with the state, so the day is built around the grounds and the view across to it — which is where the deer are anyway.
Entry to the gardens and any museum is paid at the gate and is not part of the booking, so carry local notes. The car is yours for the day, which means the itinerary is genuinely adjustable — say what you want more of. Avoid weekends if you can: the toll road southbound on a Saturday morning can add an hour in each direction, and the gardens fill with Jakarta families doing exactly what you are doing.
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Its herbarium and laboratories grew into national scientific institutions, and its seed exchange reached botanical gardens across the tropics for a century and a half.
Four seedlings are usually named as the founders — two sent from Amsterdam, two from the Indian Ocean islands — and their offspring were selected here for decades before Sumatra planted at scale.
Because it is. The name is meteorological — the city sits under one of the highest thunderstorm frequencies recorded anywhere, with storms on most days of the year.
Start early. Storms come in the afternoon and they are heavy, so the gardens are best done in the morning with the drive home when the sky darkens.
Not on this day. The interior opens only by arrangement with the state, so the visit is built around the grounds and the view across the lawn.
White-spotted deer descended from animals brought from Nepal in the nineteenth century. They have grazed that lawn long enough to be part of the scene.
No. Garden and museum entry is settled at the gate, so carry local notes for the day.
A weekday morning is also when the lawns are emptiest. On Sunday half the city treats them as its picnic ground.