The island of the gods
A ride through Bali: Tenganan village and Besakih temple
After spending two months in Bali, one weekend I decided to finally go and explore a bit beyond the South of the island, which is the most urbanised and touristy part.
Bali is a place whose reputation precedes it, and yet in the most developed areas it can be hard to get a feel for the atmosphere that drew generations of travellers. The provincial capital Denpasar has become just another example of Indonesian urban sprawl, while the whole Southern coast is packed full with tourist developments.
So it was that one Saturday last month I rented a scooter and headed off East. My first destination was the town of Candidasa, on the coast. It was a two hour ride to get there. Unfortunately, most of the drive was through the suburban sprawl of Gianyar Regency, where I was constantly surrounded by other scooters, cars and trucks. It was not particularly relaxing, and I had to be constantly alert.
Once I reached the coast buildings got scarcer, but I found myself on a major road which was also quite busy with traffic. At one point I saw the aftermath of an accident, as a local family of three, who had all been riding on the same scooter, sat on the side of the road, their vehicle overturned. I didn’t see any sign of them wearing helmets.
The family thankfully didn’t seem seriously hurt. The father, who had a torn shirt and some blood on his shoulder, was trying to cheer up his daughter, who looked unscathed. The mother sat on the ground in a daze. There was a truck stopped nearby, but given the family’s relatively good health, I don’t suppose the truck driver had actually collided with them full-on.
It is common to see families of three or four crammed onto one scooter in Bali (and elsewhere in Indonesia). It is also very frequent to see three teenage girls sharing a single scooter. Helmets are only worn some of the time. In the countryside it isn’t too bad, but on major roads it becomes quite dangerous. (To be fair driving in Thailand, which I did a few months ago, struck me as even more dangerous. My feeling is borne out by statistics: Indonesia has an average rate of road fatalities for a developing country, while Thailand has one of the highest rates in the world.)
In any case, I eventually reached Candidasa. Originally a fishing village, Candidasa caught on as a tourist destination in the 70s thanks to its excellent opportunities for diving and snorkelling. It’s still a small place, but there’s a main road near the sea that’s lined with bungalows, hotels and restaurants. It remains far more sedate than Kuta and the other beach towns in Bali’s main tourist strip.
I stayed in a homestay facing the sea, ran by an Indonesian woman and her Australian husband. The woman seemed to do all the actual running, while the frail-looking husband mostly sat in their little restaurant overlooking the beach, drinking beer. Rooms with hot water and air con cost 18 Euros; without, they cost 10.
That afternoon I took my scooter again and went to the village of Tenganan. Only a ten minute drive from the coast, Tenganan is known for being one of the villages where the Bali Aga people live.
The Bali Aga (“mountain Balinese”) are often described as the indigenous people of Bali. They stick to the customs and traditions that existed on the island before it was incorporated into the Majapahit Empire, the great Hindu-Buddhist Javanese empire of the 14th-15th century that is sometimes seen as the precursor of modern Indonesia.
The Bali Aga now only live in a few scattered villages deep in the mountains. They are Hindu like most Balinese, but their Hinduism is derived from the Indra Sect, and they never adopted the caste system now in use in the rest of Bali. They also do not cremate their dead, like Hindus in Bali and elsewhere generally do. Their dialect of Balinese is unique, and changes from one village to the next.
Tenganan is by far the most easily accessible Bali Aga village, and also the most friendly towards outsiders. The other most well-know Bali Aga settlement, called Trunyan, is located in an inaccessible valley near Lake Batur, in the North of Bali. It is known for its unusual funerary rites: dead bodies are just put in bamboo cages and left to decompose, after which their skulls are placed on an altar in a special place that can only be reached by boat. Only the corpses of married people are dealt with in this way, while the corpses of the unmarried are buried.
The few visitors who make it to Trunyan, however, often have bad things to say about the experience. It is an isolated community and the people are apparently quite unfriendly and even hostile to outsiders. There are reports of tourists being scammed, and the 5-minute boat ride to the altar with the skulls can cost exorbitant sums. Of course, you can hardly blame the locals for wanting to be left in peace on one of the world’s most touristy islands.
Tenganan, on the other hand, has clearly embraced tourism. It is however still an isolated community, where outsiders are not allowed after dark and there are no options to stay the night. The village sits on the side of a hill, and it is surrounded by a stone wall. You enter from a gate on the downhill end. There is no entry ticket, but you can leave a donation if you want.
According to Balinese tradition, the village is laid out along the mountain-sea axis of kaja (to the mountain) and kelod (to the sea). The houses are built on either side of two concourses, with their doors opening onto them. In the middle, between the concourses, are a series of pavilions where communal meetings and ceremonies are held. The most important one is the bale agung, where the village council meets and holds important decisions.
The village felt quite rural, with buffaloes walking about freely between the two rows of houses. It was hardly overwhelmed with visitors, but I saw at least two small groups of tourists walking around. There were several stands near the entrance where local artists sold their creations to visitors. Tenganan is know for its production of Geringsing, a double-ikat textile which is made only in three places in the world, and only in this village in Indonesia. It is the most difficult and expensive type of Ikat technique.
Once I got to the end of the village there was a little track that wandered off into the forest. Right at the start of the track, I saw a ditch full of rubbish. This was clearly where the villagers go to throw their waste. It was a real blight on the otherwise lovely environment, and it is sobering to realise that even in this village so near the coast there is no proper rubbish collection.
I spent the night in Candidasa. In the evening I went to a bar where an Indonesian band was making really god renditions of Western classics. At one point they even invited me on stage to play the guitar with them. I played the chords to La Bamba as best as I could, while the band played along with me.
The next day I left Candidasa and rode all the way to Besakih, the holiest temple in Balinese Hinduism. To get there I had to drive for 2-3 hours through the mountains of Eastern Bali.
I enjoyed this ride a lot more than the previous day’s one. I drove through isolated mountain roads with little traffic. The scenery was beautiful. I saw plenty of the verdant rice terraces surrounded by palm trees that are so typical of Bali. Down on the coast it had been hot, but once I reached a certain altitude the weather became cool and drizzly. The roads were quite steep, and I had to drive carefully.
The villages I drove through looked quite simple, and not at all touristy. They reminded me of villages in Java, except that they had Hindu temples instead of mosques. There was none of the prosperity and fancy stores you see in the South of Bali. In spite of all the romanticisation of their lifestyle, most Balinese live a hardscrabble existence which would be familiar to people around Indonesia and much of the world.
It’s easy to forget it when you stay in the touristy part of Bali, but Indonesia is still a relatively poor country, and Bali is by no means one of its richest provinces. Surprisingly, Bali’s GDP per capita is lower than the national average, and quite close to that of remote North Maluku, which I visited last month. It is way lower than that of areas with abundant natural resources, including Borneo and even Papua.
This is one indicator of how hard it is for the tourist industry to bring widespread prosperity to developing countries. Bali’s tourism may be an important source of hard currency for Indonesia, but few of the island’s four million people are in a position to profit from it.
After driving through the mountains I finally reached Besakih Temple. I was greeted by the incongruous site of a huge parking lot at the entrance. I parked my scooter and was immediately surrounded by some ladies trying to sell me a canang sari basket for offerings. I said I didn’t want it, but they said that I had to buy it, as it was required for visitors to the temple. I was skeptical, but I ended paying them 50.000 Rupiah (3 Euro) for the basket.
Besakih is located at 1000 metres from sea level, on the slopes of Mount Agung, the active volcano in the middle of Bali. It is the largest and most important temple of Balinese Hinduism. The site became a place of pilgrimage thousands of years ago, long before Hinduism arrived on these islands, when the volcano itself was probably the object of veneration.
The temple complex is extensive, and includes 23 separate temples. I saw plenty of foreign tourists there, but I saw an even greater number of Balinese from across the island who had come to Besakih to conduct cerimonies. They were mostly travelling in groups and wearing traditional clothing. The Balinese take their religious tradition very seriously, and attending ceremonies of all kinds seems to be a part of life.
I ended up following a guide who was showing two Javanese girls around. He took us into the courtyard of a temple, and guided us to receive a blessing in the Balinese way. We sat down with crossed legs and put our hands in a prayer position, and then placed some frangipani flowers in our hair. The frangipani flower has a spiritual significance in Bali.
A priest blessed us by sprinkling water on us, and then sticking some grains of rice on our foreheads. It is common in Bali to see people walking around with grains of rice stuck on their forehead, or even on their neck. The forehead represents the third eye, and the grains are placed there to thank the gods for rice and life. We were told that these were grains of rice that had been washed in Mount Agung’s water and blessed by priests.
After receiving the blessing I and the two girls left a tip for the temple (each one of us gave 20,000 Rupiah, or just over 1 euro, as the guide suggested), and later I left the guide a tip as well (around 2 euros). I then walked back down the mountain to the car park, found my scooter and got ready for the long ride back to Ubud. After a long two days, it was time to go home.