A Sunday Morning Stroll at Wisdom Park: Serene Park With Lush Foliage

While the city park isn’t as impressive as the ones in Bangkok, Thailand. Wisdom park, one of the massive biodiversity parks in Yogyakarta has its own charm. The park belongs to the oldest university in Indonesia, UGM and it offers about 6 hectare areas to explore with a few trekking spots and even sports venues. Throughout the year, this park has had its renovation and these days, people are going to the park to jog, stroll, meditate or simply picnic around its artificial river. In this park, there are also toilet, drinking water fountain and pretty complete for being a public facility. If you enjoy finding feathery friends, fishing or even just trying to capture different butterflies, this place has it all.

In the past when I was still a student in the university, I passed through this park daily and it was quite barren. Not a lot of people were attracted to it as it was pretty unkempt. These days, the park has had quite a renovation which makes it an alternative for locals and students to spend their weekend especially Sunday morning.

There are several entries to this park but since I know the hidden shortcuts, my friend and I visited from the veterinary faculty and through the butterfly dome. In this park, not only is it surrounded by tall, massive trees that mimic a rainforest such as the one you see above, it also has quite vibrant wildlife from butterflies, insects, to feathery friends all around the park. The flowers in this park are also quite varied. Since now we're entering rainy season, a lot of the flowers are blooming nicely and it isn't too hot to walk around the area.

My friend and I started our stroll from the lake side. In this lake, there are viewing deck as well as an elephant fountain. In the past, this place was really dirty but now, it’s cleaned and some people even sit on its viewing deck just to watch birds flying low and drinking from the lake. However, it only gets dirty by the falling leaves which adds its own charm to this artificial lake.

As we walk to the south, there are a few amphitheaters that are surrounded by beautiful bougainvilleas and galpinia.As the sun gets higher, it provides a beautiful lighting to the flowers and makes it extremely refreshing and beautiful to look at. There are also plenty flowers like below that I don't know the name of. They are pretty in yellow and while there is a breeze the stems sways gently and rhythmicallyy. It was such a beautiful sight to see.

Once we passed through the first amphitheater, we got to see a river that separates two sides of an area. Around the river,we can see the road side and throughout the running trek, it offers plenty of typical rainforest plantations.

I found a few cats around the area. While they might look stray, they look quite healthy and fairly clean for a typical stray cat. As the one you see below, it is very calm even when people are around trying to touch it.

I was glad to bring my camera with me because that stroll also turns into a mini photo-hunting where I can capture various flowers and interesting sights such as this below, where you can see the university mosque tower. When I was about to leave the place, I saw a few people sitting by the river side. I told my friends that what's missing is just a monitor lizard haha.

In that park, I saw some teenagers doing tiktok dance while some were doing aerobics together. I didn’t know that this place is now quite bustling as in the past, not a lot of people are even attracted to this area. While strolling, I told my friend that if they really want to fund the development of the park, it could even be something better and a lot more decent and could be “the iconic park” that people visit while traveling to Yogyakarta.

On our way going back, I also tried getting into the stairs that stretch quite a bit near the lake. Many take pictures in this area as they also want to get the full view of the lake.

It takes approximately an hour to explore all areas with a brisk walk and a few stops. While it’s not as massive as Queen Sirikit or any other parks in many areas, this park is quite refreshing and a free alternative when trying to find a spot to jog,a simple picnic as well as a refreshing place offering sights of beautiful flora.That’s all for today! See you in my next adventure.