Hunting for Selfies in a Cassava Field

GREGORIUS MAGNUS FINESSO

· 5 minutes read

The boom in domestic tourism has created new sources of livelihood for villagers who once were nothing but passive observers. Driven by their newfound awareness of the huge potential of their villages, they are breaking boundaries through creative approaches to tourism.

A thin veil of fog hung low over the hills in Mangli village of Kaliangkrik district, Magelang regency, Central Java. From the top of a observation post, visitors can gaze down at the vast forests, farms and tobacco plantations below. The rays of the sun started breaking through the thick clouds overhead.

The sound of a cell phone camera broke the silence. On one side of the observation post, two teenagers were taking selfies.

“You got it with the sunlight, right?” asked Noviani, 18.

“I got it. Relax. I’ll post it to Instagram right now,” responded her friend Riska Amelia, also 18.

The two friends from Bandung, West Java, were on vacation in Magelang. Their sole mission was to take as many selfies as they could. They said that seeing beautiful photographs of Magelang on the popular photo-sharing social networking platform, Instagram, had spurred them to travel to the regency.

“Borobudur [Temple] is a must. However, on Instagram, [photos of Borobudur] are not that popular. Photos from this place, however, will surely get lots of comments,” said Riska.

The two then bought two cups of coffee and sat on a wooden bench. Behind them, a Red-and-White flag waved from atop a colorful pole. Time for more selfies.

Mangli observation post is located in Kaliangkrik district’s remotest village. Located at the foot of Mt. Sumbing, the village is around 30 kilometers from downtown Magelang.

Mangli resident Eko Wahono, 40, said that the village was originally an uninteresting spot along the Kaliangkrik route of the Mt. Sumbing hiking trail. The local people were mostly farmers that grew cassava and other food crops. However, thanks to the Internet, the villagers’ eyes were opened to the hidden potential of their village.

Inspiration

Their village has always been beautiful for the people of Mangli. “For us, this natural beauty was nothing special. However, we read on the Internet that remote places with stunning panoramas were gaining popularity among tourists. That was our inspiration,” said villager Sujarwo, who built the Silancur observation post earlier this year.

The Silancur observation post is around 2 kilometers from the Mangli observation post. The two spots were originally food crop and cassava farms surround by the lush trees on the peaks.

Sujarwo proposed building an observation post from bamboo. Visitors pay Rp 5,000 (34 US cents) to enter, including a parking fee. Every month, the observation post generates Rp 30 million in revenue, a portion of which goes to the village coffers.

Social media has been an effective promotional tool. Among the most popular pictures posted recently was titled “Top Selfie Pinusan Kragilan”, taken in Pakis district. The location is about as remote as Mangli, and is 27 kilometers to the east of downtown Magelang on the slopes of Mt. Merbabu.

Since its development in 2015, selfie hunters have dubbed the tourist spot “heaven”. Apart from the lush pine tree forest, it also has several unique spots for taking selfies. At one spot, a wooden board covered with thick layers of cotton creates the illusion of standing on a cloud. At another spot, a giant eagle statue stands, its wings outstretched.

“My favorite is the bench and desk in front of the pine forest. We just sit there, and it looks like we are floating,” said Anisa Pratiwi, 30, a visitor from Semarang, who had traveled there for a high school reunion.

Innovation

Subianto, the chairman of the Top Selfie Kragilan organization, said that he always encouraged the management of selfie spots to provide new designs every three months to prevent visitors from becoming bored of the location.

“The selfie spots are our main assets. If we don’t change them often, travelers will only come here once or twice and then they’ll get bored,” he said.

Subianto said the tourist attraction had transformed the village. Before, 90 percent of the 72 households that make up Kragilan’s population were farmers. Today, 90 percent of the village population is involved in tourism initiatives. Most of the adults manage selfie spots while the teenagers work as photographers. Still others manage the visitors’ parking lots or run food stalls. “In the week of the Idul Fitri holiday, we made more than Rp 100 million,” said Subianto.

Sutilah, 16, is among those who has benefited from the tourism business. After graduating middle school, she spent her days helping her parents on the farm. Nowadays, however, she earns a monthly net income of up to Rp 2.5 million as a photographer at Top Selfie Kragilan.

She bought a camera with the Rp 6 million her parents gave her, and learned photography techniques on her own. The “viral” tourism economy has spread outwards from Kragilan, and 2 kilometers away in Pogalan village’s Grenden hamlet, the local residents are developing Grenden nature tourism along with Mt. Merbabu National Park.

The Magelang tourism, youth and sports agency’s data shows that 80 new tourist destinations have cropped up in the regency in the last three to five years. All can serve as Instagrammable alternatives for runners in the 2018 Borobudur Marathon.

In rural areas today, preserving nature means prosperity for the local residents.

Editor:

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