Man walks 800 km backwards in protest against deforestation: Indonesia

An Indonesian man, in an attempt to seek the President's help in saving a forest close to his house has decided to walk 800 km in reverse from the eastern part of the Java island to capital Jakarta.

Medi Bastoni, 43, hopes to meet and ask President Joko Widodo to give him a symbolic seed, to be planted in the forests on Mount Wills - situated around 20 km from his village Dono in the East Java province - to spread awareness about preserving nature, according to social media reports.

He walks backwards with the help of a headpiece built with plastic pipes, fixed with a rear-view mirror which allows him to walk backwards. On July 18, Bastoni set off from Dono and expects to reach the capital on August 17, the Indonesian Independence Day, Efe news reported.

According to Bastoni, walking backwards is a metaphor for looking back at the past, and he wanted to pay homage to the history of Indonesia's independence struggle.

In a post, Bastoni, father of four - who sleeps in mosques, police stations or houses of kind strangers on the way - thanked a couple for helping him when it was getting dark and he was starting to feel cold.

Bastoni has already covered around one-fourth of his planned route on Java. It is the most developed  and populated island of the archipelago, where more than half of Indonesia's 265 million people live.