The traditional heartland of Flores — Ngada megalithic villages, Inerie volcano above the town, and some of Indonesia's most distinctive highlands coffee
Bajawa is a highland market town in central Flores — at 1,100m on the slopes of the Inerie stratovolcano (2,245m, still active), 130km east of Labuan Bajo. The town itself is the administrative centre of the Ngada district and a functional but not particularly attractive highland Indonesian town; the reason to come is the surrounding Ngada villages (Bena, Wogo, Nage, Bela, Luba, Nua) — traditional communities that have maintained their megalithic stone-pillar ceremonial culture and their characteristic house design (clan houses with boat-shaped roofs, facing each other across a communal sacre…
The Ngada people of the Bajawa highlands have maintained their ancestral religion and megalithic traditions through the Portuguese colonial period (which brought Catholicism to coastal Flores from the 16th century), the Dutch colonial period, and Indonesian independence. The traditional belief system (Dewa — the supreme deity; Nitu — the ancestor spirits; and the elaborate system of sacrificial ceremony around marriage, death, and harvest) has coexisted with Catholicism rather than being replaced by it. The highland villages' distinctive architecture (the boat-shaped clan houses reflect the a…