INDONESIA: Life for 285 Million People Who Never Left the Ring of Fire | Travel Documentary

Why do 285 million people in Indonesia stay under more than a hundred live volcanoes? This travel documentary follows their answer across 19 places on the Ring of Fire.

On Sebesi Island, nine miles from Anak Krakatau, the first alarm is a fisherman with a radio. At Kawah Ijen, men carry up to 200 pounds of sulfur out of a crater beside the largest acid lake on Earth. At Mount Bromo, the Tengger people throw fruit, livestock and money into the crater once a year. In Bali, 1,200 subak councils have shared volcanic water between rice terraces for a thousand years. On Flores, 450 families still sleep in tents six months after Lewotobi Laki-laki emptied six villages.

The film explains how Java holds more than half of Indonesia's people on 7 percent of its land. It shows why Borobudur was stacked from nearly two million blocks of cooled lava. At Kelimutu, the Lio people read three colored lakes as the resting places of their ancestors.