Bali's Beautiful Landscapes

At a waterfall in Munduk

Bali definitely has its commercialized, built-up parts, but there are also plenty of places to get off the beaten track and escape the traffic, crowds and tourist shops.  This post focuses on Bali's rugged interior, which offers a dazzling array of volcanoes, mountains, waterfalls, picturesque villages and rural landscapes, and - perhaps most famously - steep emerald green rice terraces. 

Our favorite spot was Munduk, a small mountain town in northern Bali where the tourist crowds thin to a trickle.  Legend has it that the village was settled centuries ago by people from the mountains who were escaping an invasion of ants.  (Sounds like a great topic for an exotic science fiction movie.)  More recently, when the Dutch expanded their colonial empire in Indonesia from Java to Bali, they used Munduk as a mountain retreat to escape the heat and as an agricultural center to grow export commodities like coffee, cocoa, cloves and vanilla.  There's not all that much to see in the village itself, but there are numerous areas for hiking, and it was a great place just to relax on the terrace at our small hotel, drink a few Bintangs, and soak up the gorgeous mountain views.

Want some rice?

Another favorite was touring around to see some of Bali's fabled rice terraces.  From a practical standpoint, terracing serves to maximize the usage of land on steep slopes, to prevent erosion, and to facilitate irrigation.  The terraces are also culturally significant, as they represent a distinctive form of community-based agriculture that has prevailed for centuries.  Aesthetically speaking, the terraces reflect an artful marriage between human engineering and the natural environment - the intricate visual pattern created by layer after twisting layer of bright green is indeed a stunning sight. Jatiluwih, the site of Bali's oldest and largest set of rice terraces, has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Mount Batur

There are also several impressive volcanoes.  We visited Mount Batur, an active volcano that last erupted in the year 2000.  Apparently, the original eruption some 25,000 years ago is one of the largest known volcanic events on earth.  The authorities in Indonesia have recently detected a marked surge in the frequency of tremors and have cautioned that it may erupt again soon.  (Thankfully, we're no longer there.)  It's a scenic place, with expansive vistas and a pretty volcanic lake.

The kids loved Bali and the island's diverse natural beauty was certainly one of the main attractions.  Before a long hike in Munduk, the kids were complaining vigorously:  "It's too hot, we're too tired, the hike is too long and we don't like hiking anyway!"   But then we reached the first of several waterfalls.  "This is awesome!  We love this!  We don't ever want to leave!"  Nothing like a beautiful waterfall (or two scoops of ice cream) to change one's mind....

View from the hotel in Munduk

The garden at our hotel in Munduk

More from our hotel in Munduk

View of the ceiling, our hotel in Munduk

Some more shots from our hotel in Munduk

Hiking in Munduk

Jeremy and our guide approach a waterfall in Munduk

Want some coffee?

This spider eats small children - unless they listen to their parents

"We don't want to leave!"

Cow with mountains, Pemuteran (northwestern Bali)

Here are some shots of the rural landscape outside of Ubud

 

Here are some more shots of Bali's rice terraces

More from the volcano

At a stream, on the grounds of a Hindu temple

Back to the rice terraces

 

Here are some more scenic shots from the road

The Unique Hindu Temples Of Bali

Bali is an island of temples. The Indonesian government has apparently cataloged more than 11,000 temples on the island, which is only about 2,100 square miles in size, just slightly larger than the state of Delaware. There are temples everywhere.  Even individual homes and businesses have their own temples and shrines.  In a moment of comic hyperbole, one of our guides exclaimed, "There must be a million temples on this tiny island!"  One of our most memorable experiences in Bali was walking in a small village outside the city of Ubud, where each house had its own intricately decorated shrine, creating a striking streetscape that you wouldn't see anywhere else in the world.

Indeed, the Hindu traditions and practices in Bali seemed a world apart from the Hinduism we witnessed earlier on our trip - in southern India, Sri Lanka and Singapore (and in northern India and Nepal, where Eden and I spent two months in 1999).  Broadly speaking, Balinese Hinduism reflects a distinctive mix of Hindu and Buddhist influences from abroad grafted onto a set of preexisting indigenous religious customs based on animism and the worship of ancestral spirits.  Jeremy was quick to point out the singular experience of visiting a Hindu temple in Bali, at one point observing that "it seems much calmer here, not as grand, but with more trees - and you don't have to take your shoes off!"  I must admit that we didn't visit an ashram in India (our family couldn't shut up for one minute, let alone take a vow of silence lasting for any measurable period of time).  But as far as Hindu temples are concerned, the temples in Bali seemed to be smaller, quieter, and more intimate than their counterparts in South Asia.  Balinese temples also look different, with a distinctive architectural style and color scheme that seem more reminiscent of Southeast Asia and even Polynesia than the Subcontinent. 

Especially in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, visiting a Hindu temple can be an intense, even intimidating affair - with a barrage of people, traffic, colors, sounds, smells, and vivid images (and frequently an elephant or two) that assault the senses.  But in Bali, visiting a Hindu temple was often a tranquil experience.  Some temples seemed forever lost in the dense forest; at others, the only sounds we heard were some birds chirping and the flow of a nearby stream.  Even when teeming with worshipers, the proceedings seemed relaxed and deliberate - not watered down, but perhaps more graceful and less frenetic that what we were used to.  "It almost seems like we're at a Buddhist temple," Jeremy observed at one point.  He's a perceptive little guy when he looks up from his Kindle. "It's really beautiful here - I like the nature," Talia remarked at one temple that seemed like it was about to be overtaken by the vines and greenery of the jungle.

One distinctive trait of a Balinese Hindu temple is that it is not a closed building with walls and a roof, but a simple rectangular courtyard that is open to the sky.  The result is a more minimalist design and a stronger connection with the temple's natural surroundings.  Another distinctive trait is the use of natural materials such as thatch roofing, bamboo, brick and wood, another expression of the harmony between the temple and its physical environment. There's also a powerful link between temple life and the community, with an elaborate system of rituals and offerings that pervades everyday existence, requiring a seemingly constant level of devotion, time and effort.

Hindus in Bali make up only a tiny fraction of Indonesia's population and even a lesser fraction of the world's Hindus.  But Balinese Hinduism reflects a unique culture, religion and aesthetic sensibility that put the small island at the top of our world travel wish list when we were planning this adventure back in California a year ago.  Even more so than the island's beautiful scenery, which I'll cover in our next post. 

Offerings piled high

Jeremy at a small shrine in a restaurant

At our hotel in Ubud

Private house shrine outside Ubud

Private shrines line the street in a small village outside Ubud

Similar scene outside Ubud

Over 90% of people in Bali are Hindu, but there are a few Buddhist temples

Ok, let's get back to the Hindu temples (can you tell the difference?)