So here's the final installment of my photographs taken during my week at Cipanas, West Java:

This was taken on a Sunday morning, just after the Mass, at the Catholic Church in Cipanas. Ignore the two cute girls standing beside me (they're students at the seminary which I visited) and look at the background. Those are traditional musical instruments.

On that particular Sunday, whilst the Mass was still as thoroughly Roman as ever, the liturgy was sung entirely in tunes of the Sunda culture. I couldn't connect with the music, that's true, but it was really inculturation at its best! Even until now, it still rings in my head.

It so happened that the priest celebrating the Mass at the parish that morning was a guest priest. I met him after the Mass, and once he realised that I was a visitor, he introduced himself to me as a Carmelite priest. He told me that his Order had developed an entire valley into a retreat centre that was able to accommodate 5 or 6 thousand people for retreats at one go, and asked if I would be interested to visit the place with him. Which fool would say no?

So here it is, Lembah Carmel (Carmel Valley). Again, ignore those two pretty girls. Look at the little chapel behind us. That little chapel can accommodate about 300 people with lots of space to spare. Further up the hill was a humungous chapel which could accommodate 4 thousand people!

This is a view of the frontage of Lembah Carmel from a different perspective. The landscape was indescribable. A vast valley surrounded by mountains, greenery, and infested by clean cool air.

This is another place called the Cibodas Botanic Gardens. It is a very vast piece of land, again on a very high place, that is preserved as a rainforest. The natural waterfall even flows onto the road, and then back again into yet another waterfall - this must have been one of the most unique waterfall sights I had ever seen.

A stream that is formed from a waterfall.

More waterfalls.

This is the iron horse that was used to take me around to Lembah Carmel and to the Cibodas Botanic Gardens. Thanks to Pak Yosef (who works at the seminary) for having so generously offered the vehicle for my use. No lah, I didn't drive it; someone else drove me around.