Bold and beautiful Bali

It was a lunch date I knew no other could ever live up to. The bar had been set quite high; 1,500 metres above sea level, to be precise. Seated on a gangway perched atop a steep promontory, I gazed at the tall, dark (green) and handsome vista of Mount Batur opposite me, rising above misty clouds. This rendezvous – set against the backdrop of a lush forest carpeting a 30,000-year-old crater, the hide-n-seek sparkle of the distant Danau Batur Lake at its edge – was undoubtedly what romantics would label as one-of-a-kind. After all, how many times in a lifetime could I sup a few thousand feet away from an active volcanic mountain?

So far, counting my whistle-stop tour of the breathtakingly beautiful tropical island of Bali; once.

Batur Sari restaurant offers a head-spinning view of a volcano, lush forest and lake.

‘Aren’t you afraid of falling?’, asked Harti Hadisoem – the representative of travel agency Explore The Wonder and my chaperon throughout my two-day trip – her voice laced with trepidation as I swung my legs over the iron railing, leaning to drink in the sun-drenched sights as a howling wind rattled the bars.

‘Not at all,’ I said. The only risk I ran was of falling head over heels in love with the island of love.

Every second person I mention my visit to Bali to and who I meet on the island after the nine-hour long flight from Dubai to Ngurah Rai Airport, in the Balinese capital of Denpasar, acknowledge Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir Eat Pray Love for Bali’s romantic label. Another thing everyone agrees unanimously on is it’s impossible to explore all the glories of Bali in two nights and a day.

While our ever-smiling guide, Dewa, takes up the latter as a challenge, crafting a choc-a-bloc itinerary for me, he has no qualms acquiescing to the first notion. ‘When you get married, you must come here for honeymoon. Like Julia Roberts’, he insists, referring to the 2010 film adaptation.

Bali is full of contrasts, a place where traditional art and terraced rice fields co-exist superbly with luxurious five-star hotels such as Kartika Plaza.

He’s not the only one either to market this scenic isle’s colourful beaches (white due to limestone south and black in the northern volcanic region) as the abode of R&R: romance and relaxation. Stepping into the five-star Discovery Kartika Plaza Hotel – my home for the trip in the beach resort hub of Kuta – the previous night, I had a taste of the fairy-tale setting hotels here offer visitors. A melange of urban polish and classical Balinese elegance, we had stepped into a sanctuary of marbled pillars and floors, carved wood and thatched gazebos, but what took the cake was the sculptured pool sprawling across the hotel’s courtyard. Ornamented with giant fish figurines, picturesque bridges and quaint koi ponds weaving around paved, manicured lawns that opened out on the private beach, the place could have cynics wax lyrical. It definitely won me over with the splendour of the deluxe ocean-view room.

Decked in dark wood and exotic Balinese paintings of mythological characters, the carved balcony door was as exquisite as the view it opened to: a landscaped garden stretching out into the endless blue of the Pacific Ocean. My first night in Bali, I slept to an exotic lullaby of rustling coconut fronds, the rhythmic lapping of waves and the saccharine scent of frangipani flowers.

It’s this unique juxtaposition of old and new, commercial and cultural, paddy fields and barren limestone quarries, ancient temples and contemporary hotels – ying and yang , if you will – that defined the rest of my Bali sojourn. Not to mention the omnipresent fragrance of frangipanis that permeates every nook and corner of the island, as do its 20,000 shrines, earning it the epithet of the ‘island of thousand temples’.

Shreeja might have been overdressed for the beach, but she and her batik sarong fit right in with the traditional kecuk and barong dancers.

A walk through Kuta’s lanes the previous night and early morning revealed the bustling suburb’s two-faced identity: by day when the surf’s up this golden stretch of the coast is an epitome of laid-back island life. The beaches are strewn with shorts-wearing Australian surfers (looking at them it strikes me Australia is a mere three hours away), backpacking gap-year students, sunbathing tourists, locals hawking coconut water, batik shirts, on-the-beach massages, even hair-braiding services (it’s a great way to tame frizzy tresses in the humid weather) and the occasional unsuspecting journalist who finds herself inappropriately overdressed amongst them all, roasting under Bali’s blazing sun.

Just as I was convinced Bali was a hedonistic resort hub teeming with creature comforts and decadence, Harti and Dewa parcel me off in a mini-van to Ubud, Bali’s cultural and artistic motherlode. This is Julia Roberts’ Bali in Eat Pray Love, I’m told.

Over the one-and-a-half-hour journey I can see why: the landscape around us changes like a flipbook in reverse; brick-and-mortar structures and tarred roads regress to sinuous, mountainous dirt tracks overhung by canopies of jackfruit and mango trees, and terraced paddy fields combed by gentle winds. No wonder then renowned painters such as the Spaniard Antonio Blanco and Mexican Walter Spies lived, died and found their muse in this poetic relic that feels like you’ve stepped back in time and into one of Bali’s mythological legends. And it’s a concerted effort of the government to keep it so, with laws that prohibit touristic constructions in the northern regions.

Nestled in the foothills of volcanic Mt Batur and fed by nutrient-rich lava over centuries, Dewa explains to me how this is a fertile ground for crops and artistic talent. Farmers pushing hand-tractors and conical topi sawah hats on their heads indicate the agricultural fertility, but it’s the graffiti-splattered, paint-flecked walls of traditional brick houses that’s my first glimpse of Ubud’s famed painters.

Our only stops here are at the Semar Kuning artists’ cooperative – an art gallery and school. There’s a strict no-photograph policy to prevent replicas, and I’m glad that my walk through the silent white chambers of mystical watercolours, intricate portraits in oil and life-size murals of rainforests isn’t filtered through a camera lens. However, outside on the verandah I’m free to click away at the oeuvres taking life under the agile paint-smeared fingers of artists clad in udengs (headdresses) and sarongs. I could spend another hour here, but I have to finish the rest of my whirlwind itinerary.

The Peliatan Palace, where the royal family still live.

It’s hard to demarcate where Ubud ends and the autonomous village of Peliatan begins, but as you step through the arches (marvellous feats of masonry – a must-visit for those interested in architecture) of this imperial home of the Peliatan family since the 17th century, you know you’re in the presence of royalty, literally.

The family still stays in sections of the palace closed off to visitors. It’s a trilling laughter from an inner pavilion that first alerts me to their presence and breaks the hypnotic hold the glinting gold-edged pagodas, secret gardens of lotus ponds ornamented with marble sculptures of sprites and the sneering stone gargoyles have on me. The palace worker who’s guiding us shows me a family photo of the late King Ida Dewa Agung Peliatan, the Queen and their two fragilely beautiful princesses bedecked in golden crowns and traditional jewellery. I’m clad in the obligatory sarong and sash visitors must wear before entering palaces and temples in Bali. There’s a door ajar and I surreptitiously peer through the crack, catching a glimpse of a young woman lounging in slacks.

Before I leave, one of the attendants gives me a woven basket filled with tea and sugary doughnuts called kue ketans and kukis (flour cookies). ‘This is the same as the royal family’s afternoon tea,’ she says. Who am I to decline a royal high-tea, Balinese style?

Clockwise from left: Devotees during a festival. The underground pond at Tirta Empul temple. Roasting kopi luwak – civet coffee – beans.

Varieties of teas and coffees served at the BAS plantation.

The BAS Coffee plantation was a tiny local cooperative that curates Ubud’s agricultural best in farmed plots – ‘here’s a cacao tree, there’s a jackfruit, a mango and oh, here we make the world’s most expensive coffee – the Kopi Luwak ground from droppings of civet cats’. Ideally the crisp fragrance of roasting coffee beans should have one begging for a sip of freshly brewed java. But I’d witnessed the process that transformed the racoon-like animals’ poo to a cuppa joe and politely declined. For 50,000 Rupiah a cup (about Dh14) it is cheap.

What I do opt for instead is gleeful gulps of smooth coco and aromatic nectar-like pandan tea, made from a herb fundamental to Southeast Asian cooking.

Traditional snacks, klepons.

On our hour-long drive back to the Kartika Plaza, stuck in Indonesia’s notorious traffic jams, as one of Bali’s spectacular saffron sunsets puts up a show, I take stock of the day’s outing munching on juicy green klepons (boiled rice cake stuffed with palm sugar and coated in grated coconut) bought from a roadside hawker.

In the journey to and fro, I’d covered over 250km and six sites of touristic interest from the southwest of Bali to the northeast. All the while eating, finding spirituality and falling in love with some of the world’s most picturesque places.

Eat, pray, love… it’s all possible in Bali, Ms Gilbert.