Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden

Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden is the best among other butterfly gardens I ever visited in the land of Sunda. Although it is not a big garden, it is neatly maintained and the best part is you can see a lot, literally lots of butterflies flying freely! Moreover, you can learn many things about the life cycle of a butterfly :)

This garden is located in the middle of Cihanjuang street. It is a bit difficult to spot it since there are only a small sign and a gate. Don't worry, just enter the gate and once you pay the parking fee you will find huge parking lot. You even can see many butterflies at the parking lot!

Then you enter the next gate, where you will find a cafe and a butterfly shop. The shop sells many things related to butterflies, sometimes you can find good, rare book about butterfly here. They even sell colorful butterfly wings made of stockings for girls. This shop is double as the ticket booth, you buy the entrance ticket to the butterfly garden at the cashier of this shop.

The ticket is valid for two places: the butterfly garden and caterpillar nursery. The entrance to the garden is on the left of the cashier, but the nursery is located in the parking lot.

Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden, Lembang - Bandung.

1. Butterfly Garden

As soon as you enter the butterfly garden, you will find a pile of colorful hats. You can wear it to attract the butterflies when roaming in the garden. Sometimes butterflies will perch on the hat, or our clothes, if we wear something bright, such as red.

Butterflies are diurnal creatures [active during the day]. Therefore, the best time to visit a butterfly garden is in the morning, when the butterflies are active.

Many butterflies welcome us when we visited them on one sunny Saturday morning. They are busy flying from one flower to another, in search of nectar, their main food.

Sometimes you also can see mating butterflies. I was surprised to know the female butterfly can fly carrying its partner while mating!

Are you interested to know more about butterfly?

Let's go to the pavilion in this garden, where you will find several frames of preserved butterflies. You can learn the name and characteristics of each butterfly. I just found out that male and female butterflies have different wings pattern. For example, there are 4 wings patterns for a Papilio Memnon: 1 wings pattern for male and 3 wing patterns for females.

This pavilion also has information about the metamorphosis of a butterfly, from an egg to larva, pupae, chrysalis and finally becomes a beautiful butterfly!

You will find a big cage in this pavilion. Inside there are hundreds of chrysalis arranged neatly. They are from all over Indonesia. Look at them closely, and you will find some butterflies slowly emerge from its chrysalis. Butterflies need a couple hours to dry their wings before they can fly. Thus, sometimes the staff will let you touch them gently or put them on your hand. Just be careful, they are so fragile and once their wings are broken, they will never be able to fly and eventually die.

Petting a 'new born' butterfly at Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden, Lembang - Bandung.

A butterfly just emerged from its chrysalis. Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden, Lembang - Bandung.

A chrysalis at Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden, Lembang - Bandung.

2. Caterpillar Nursery

Caterpillar Nursery, that's how I called it. This is not the formal name of this place, but it refers to the function of this green house.

A caterpillar at Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden, Lembang - Bandung.

It is divided into 2 sections: the first one is the nursery for the plants. The leaves of these plants will be the main food for caterpillars, hence, they are not flowers. These host plants are critical in breeding butterflies, since a female butterfly will never lay eggs if she can't find suitable plants for her baby caterpillars.

The next section is the caterpillar nursery. It contains mating butterflies, host plants, and flowers for the butterflies. The staff collects the eggs everyday and put them in the storing cabinet. Once the eggs hatch, the caterpillars will be put on the suitable leaves. From now on they will be munching and munching and munching.. until they are big enough to change their skins and finally become a chrysalis.

If you look closely, you will find many caterpillars in this nursery. At the end of this nursery there is a special place called touching area, where you are allowed to touch the caterpillars! I saw a green caterpillar that looks like a gel, stripe caterpillars with lots of horns along its body, and white fat caterpillars that will become an Attacus Atlas.

Attacus Atlas, the largest butterfly known to man, although it is actually a moth.

Actually, Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden only breeds butterflies, the only exception is the Attacus Atlas. It is known as one of the largest butterflies in the world, but in reality it is a moth! It has big beautiful wings, approximately 25-30 cm. Unfortunately it only lives for 5 days, since it doesn't have any mouth to eat. So, it only lives to mate and lay eggs. On the other hand, a caterpillar of Attacus Atlas eats 200 leaves during its 2-weeks lifetime!

Direction to Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden

Opening Hours:

8am-5pm Sat-Sun

8am-5pm Public Holiday

9am-5pm Tue-Fri

Fee Rp.20,000

Address: Cihanjuang Street no. 58, Cibaligo, Parongpong, Cimahi. The GPS coordinates are -6.8588872,107.5674744.

Cihanjuang street is the street that connected Bandung to Lembang via Cimahi. Hence, you can go to Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden from Bandung or Lembang. However, I prefer to go from Bandung to Cimahi then go up north, since the garden is closer to Cimahi than to Lembang.

If you go from Bandung km 0 at Asia Afrika street, you only need to go straight: passing Jendral Sudirman street to Cimahi. Turn right to Pesantren street, which is the first street on the right side, after you go through the flyover and underpass (under the toll road). Look at the map for a clearer direction or just turn on your GPS :)

View Map to Cihanjuang Butterfly Garden in a larger map

Are you interested to find out other butterfly gardens in the land of Sunda? One is located in Cilember, Puncak. The others are in the city: Taman Mini Indonesia Indah - Jakarta, Scientia Square Park - South Tangerang, and Cikokol garden - Tangerang.

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