Two weeks in Indonesia: the route that actually works

Every first itinerary to Indonesia fails in the same place: the map. Seventeen thousand islands look close together on a screen, and then you learn that Labuan Bajo to Raja Ampat is two flights and most of a day, that the train across Java is excellent but only goes west to east, and that the boat you booked leaves when the captain says it leaves.

This route accepts the arithmetic. Fourteen days, three bases, one long internal flight, and a boat at the end. It starts in Yogyakarta because that is where the country explains itself — Hindu stonework, a sultan's city, breakfast at six — and finishes in Komodo because the best last memory is water, not an airport.

Days 1–3: Yogyakarta, jet lag and stone

Fly into Yogyakarta (YIA) rather than Jakarta. The new airport is an hour from the city, the roads are quiet before dawn, and you save a domestic hop. If your long-haul flight lands in Jakarta, take the first morning train rather than a connection; the rail line is more reliable than the short-haul schedules.

Give Yogyakarta three nights and do the temples in the order that avoids crowds. Borobudur at opening, which means leaving the city at five and standing on the upper terraces while the mist is still in the palms. Prambanan in the last two hours of light, when the tour buses are gone and the stone turns amber. Between them, sleep, eat gudeg, and walk Malioboro after dark without buying anything.

The full version of this stop — including the sultan's water palace and where to eat at eleven at night — is in four days in Yogyakarta. If you only have three, drop Taman Sari and keep both temples.

Day 4: the train that saves you a flight

Take an executive-class train east. Yogyakarta to Surabaya is roughly four hours, air-conditioned, with a trolley of coffee and rice. It is the single most comfortable long movement in the country, and it puts you within driving distance of Bromo without another airport.

From Surabaya, a car to Cemoro Lawang on the crater rim takes about three hours. Go up in the afternoon, sleep at 2,200 metres, and accept that the room will be cold and the blanket will be thin. This is the one night of the trip where comfort is not the point.

Day 5: Bromo before the sun

The jeeps leave at three. Everyone knows this and everyone goes, which is why the viewpoint at King Kong Hill is a car park of headlights by four. The alternative is to walk from Cemoro Lawang across the Sea of Sand — forty minutes in the dark, ash underfoot, the crater breathing sulphur ahead of you — and climb the 250 steps to the rim as the light comes up. You will be alone for perhaps twenty minutes. It is worth the early start and the dust in your shoes.

By nine you are back in the car, by one at Surabaya airport, and by four in Denpasar. The transition from volcanic cold to tropical heat in a single day is the most Indonesian thing about the trip.

Days 6–8: one part of Bali, not all of it

Bali rewards a decision. Choose the centre or the coast, not both. Three nights in Sidemen or the quieter side of Ubud gives you rice terraces, river walks and a morning market without the traffic of the south. Three nights in Uluwatu gives you cliffs, surf and hotel restaurants. Trying to do both means spending two days in a car.

If you want the photograph everyone wants, go to Nusa Penida and stay one night. The day-trippers arrive at Kelingking around ten and leave by three; the hours either side belong to the people who slept there. The fast boat from Sanur takes forty minutes and the last one back is early, which is the point.

Day 9: fly east

Denpasar to Labuan Bajo is about ninety minutes, and the approach over the Flores coast is the best window seat in Indonesia. Base yourself in town for one night. Eat at the fish market at Kampung Ujung, where you point at a snapper and they grill it with chilli and lime. Go to bed early.

Days 10–12: Komodo, by water

The park is not a single island but a scatter of them, and the standard two-night trip covers the greatest hits: Padar at sunrise, a ranger walk on Komodo or Rinca, Pink Beach, and a drift along a reef where the current is doing the work. Three nights gets you further east and away from the fleet.

This is the part of the itinerary where money changes the experience most. A shared speedboat is fine; a private phinisi is another trip entirely — anchoring in a bay after everyone else has gone home, eating dinner on deck, waking up already inside the park. The cost breakdown, without the brochure language, is in what a private phinisi actually costs.

If you are deciding between the two great marine parks, the honest comparison is in Komodo or Raja Ampat. Short version: Komodo is landscape and dragons, Raja Ampat is reef. Komodo fits a two-week trip; Raja Ampat wants its own.

Days 13–14: the return, or one more island

Fly Labuan Bajo to Denpasar, then home. If you have two extra days, spend them on Flores rather than in Bali: the road to Ruteng and Bajawa passes through volcano country and villages where the thatched roofs are taller than the houses. If you have five, add Raja Ampat and accept the two flights.

What to cut if the schedule tightens: Jakarta, unless you are there for the food and the old town. Lombok, unless you are climbing Rinjani. And the second beach destination. Indonesia is not a country you finish.

When this route works, and when it doesn't

This is a dry-season itinerary. April to October gives you calm crossings to Komodo, clear mornings at Bromo, and roads that do not flood. In January and February the same route still functions, but the boat days are a gamble and the Bromo viewpoint may be inside a cloud. If you are travelling in the wet season, read Indonesia month by month and flip the order: Komodo first, Java last.

The money, roughly

Excluding international flights, a comfortable version of this route — four-star hotels, private drivers, a private phinisi for two nights — runs to roughly $5,000–7,000 per person for two. The same route on local transport, homestays and shared boats can be done for a quarter of that. The gap is almost entirely in the boat and the drives, not the hotels.

Book the Komodo boat first. Everything else can move around it. The park's daily visitor cap and the limited number of licensed boats mean the good departures sell out weeks ahead in July and August, and a fortnight's notice in high season gets you what is left.

One last piece of advice, learned the hard way: leave the last day empty. Indonesian transport is good at the ordinary and bad at the exceptional, and a delayed flight the day before your international connection is the most common way a good trip ends badly.