Papua

the archetype.

The high passes of the Andes, the interior routes of Papua, the mountain roads of Nepal and northern Pakistan.

The kind of route where the scheduled time is 20 hours, and the realistic time is anywhere from 20 to 50, because the variable isn't traffic, it's geology.

And the bus.

Now, under Prabowo, we've also seen this kind of changes or shifts in the civil-military relations, arguably in a wider and more dramatic way.

These include the 2025 TNI law that expanded the domestic role of TNI in governance to the restoration of the military as an agent of development in Papuan food estates and, for instance, the nutritious lunch program.

As a scholar of civil military relations in Indonesia, what are you watching most keenly under the Prabowo government to measure shifts in civil military relations?

There are two areas I think we should look at.

Indonesia has recorded over 170,000 respiratory cases since August in regions affected by forest and land fires, including more than 40,000 cases affecting toddlers.

Blazes in Borneo, Sumatra and Papua are causing toxic smog over parts of the country, as well as in Malaysia and Singapore.

Health authorities have sent oxygen concentrators, masks and oxygen canisters to affected regions and advised people to reduce outdoor activities when air quality worsens.

Officials say the blazes are being intensified by the strongest El Nino climate phenomenon in decades, as well as climate change, forest degradation and slash-and-burn land clearing.

Have I done anything like this before? I've done plenty of other adventures, like primarily hiking adventures.

like in India, Papua, climbed Kilimanjaro and a couple of mountains in America.

Just before I started this trip, I was on another two-month trip where I spent a month riding horses in Mongolia, including a week with just me and two horses solo riding around the lake, which was absolutely epic.

And maybe not similar to cycling, except for the ass pain is definitely the exact same.

The Malays predominate in Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, the Philippines, in short, in the Malay Archipelago, as well as on the Malay Peninsula, which is more a part of the Archipelago than of Asia.

The third group consists of various black or chocolate-colored peoples, for the most part primitive savages, among them the Aborigines of Australia, the Papuans of New Guinea, Papua, the Solomon Islands and Fiji, and the Negritos, or small Negroes, scattered throughout the Philippines and other Malaysian islands.

This sketch will perhaps forestall any tendency to classify all South Sea Islanders as fierce headhunters, or on the other hand, to regard them all as handsome and intelligent folk devoted to strumming the ukulele.

There is a map of the Pacific Ocean with railroads, steamship lanes, ocean cables and telegraph lines on page 374.

It has the advantage of supplying labourers who are more willing and better able to stand the work on the plantations.

But if generally adopted it would mean that the Pacific islands would become Asiatic or Chinese, and the native Polynesian and Melanesian races would be doomed to the fate of insignificant minorities in their ancestral islands.

A few years later, after annexing Fiji, Great Britain invaded two of the very large islands north of Australia, namely Borneo and Papua, New Guinea, both of which had been long claimed but not seriously occupied by the Dutch.

The northern part of Borneo was ruled by independent native chieftains, and its coasts were infested by pirates.

Intelligent and artistic, some of them civilized to the point of having a written language and of building beautiful temples, the Malays predominate in Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, the Philippines, in short, in the Malay Archipelago, as well as on the Malay Peninsula, which is more a part of the Archipelago than of Asia.

The third group consists of various black or chocolate-colored peoples, for the most part primitive savages, among them the Aborigines of Australia, the Papuans of New Guinea, Papua, the Solomon Islands and Fiji, and the Negritos, or small Negroes, scattered throughout the Philippines and other Malaysian islands.

This sketch will perhaps forestall any tendency to classify all South Sea Islanders as fierce headhunters, or on the other hand, to regard them all as handsome and intelligent folk devoted to strumming the ukulele.

There is a map of the Pacific Ocean with railroads, steamship lanes, ocean cables, and telegraph lines on page 374.

But if generally adopted it would mean that the Pacific islands would become Asiatic or Chinese.

And the native Polynesian and Melanesian races would be doomed to the fate of insignificant minorities in their ancestral islands.

A few years later, after annexing Fiji, Great Britain invaded two of the very large islands north of Australia, namely Borneo and Papua New Guinea, both of which had been long claimed but not seriously occupied by the Dutch.

The northern part of Borneo was ruled by independent native chieftains, and its coasts were infested by pirates.