THIS small, picturesque hill station makes for a restful overnight pit stop on the journey east from Madiun to Solo. The town occupies the southern slope of Central Java’s Mount Lawu at an elevation of 1,287 meters, the ponderous and foreboding shape of the mammoth but inactive volcano looming above the town.

Cabbages, onions, sweet potato and every other imaginable European vegetable grow on terraces to either side of the steep road lead