Hidden in the faraway lagoons on a deserted island in a blissful naked solitude everything is just perfect – between the nature and us. But then religion comes in and our nakedness suddenly becomes a shameful act. 

Two and a half hours stumbling on muddy forest paths covered with sinuous roots move the contracts of a modern day Robinson into distant memories and help get into the swing of the fantasy of the wild life. Every time I try to grab another winding liana to avoid falling I give it a sharpened look and try to make sure the convoulted withe around it is definitely a plant. Mud is suppressing between my toes and I feel my feet sinking deeper and deeper into the mud floor. We’ve been walking up and down the hills forever and it’s only now when I hear the waves splashing against the rocks, which means we’re getting to the other side of the island.

The guide cuts us a few longer sticks and says good bye. Alone on a deserted island. On yellow sand. In blue water. Under the golden sun. In the shade of green trees. With a red saucepan in orange flames. Symbolically we throw our clothes off and delve into our bliss. Oh the freedom it is to be in the nude on a secret beach of an overcrowded Muslim state. Our days pass in constant activity, like it’s common to a Robinson.

It’s difficult not to do anything even in a total solitude. Once we have to find branches and then light the fire. Then we need to bathe in the sea or wash ourselves. As soon as we’ve boiled coffee water in our red saucepan we fill it with sea water to cook food. And when the food has cooked we can start thinking about the next meal time.  

The nights here are even more beautiful. The flaming heat has turned into mysterious silence. The sea rises and thus swimming in the moon light is especially wonderful. We open our arak bottle and let our senses rise high while we philosophize about the world orders or decode the myths of the Javanese souls. Finally, overblown we land in our “shelter”, thinking the day in silence had been one of the most glorious we’ve spent on Java.

This idyll is going through my head in slow motion, Bambies are hopping in the forest, butterflies are flapping their colourful wings, stars are falling from the sky, I’d never want to come out of this bliss, until on one day…

Bule! Ada bule! (White people!) At the same moment I hear noise and laughter from the forest. About ten teenage Indonesians rush out from the forest, being like unwanted cannibals who destroy our idyll with a second and eat us with their eyes. I’m just taking my afternoon bathe in the nood, me and the nature, when girls with covered hair conquer the beach. Marie brings me a towel so I could cover my naked body, because the moment a human arrives, religion overpowers nature, and the thing I’d thought as being part of the nature has now become a shameful behaviour against God’s will. 

Hours pass and there’s not only one group of Indonesians at the beach, but at least four or five who all have become to enjoy the wild life, having seen that there are some Robinsons living at the beach already they don’t go to the next beach but sit down next to you and hiss Dari mana? (From where?) It still remains a mystery why should one hike 2.5 hours along impossible paths on a deserted island and then continue socializing as intensively as before. 

We leave the island the next morning and I have the memory of the little blue lagoon where I experienced my social isolation in a bliss.