Gilimanuk harbor was my entrance to Bali. Monkeys were mooching at the edge of a forest as we rode to Pemuteran, suggested by Lonely Planet as a good place to spend a night in the North. Indeed it is much calmer than the South and apparently good for diving.

That night there was a full moon – “Poornachandr” – and Balinese Hindus pay attention to such things. Actually, it was more than a full moon. The date was July 27th 2018, time of the longest lunar eclipse of the century. Five minutes after exiting the hotel, I was sitting in the lotus position in front of a small family sanctuary. Relatives were praying around and the family leader was explaining to me the beneficial properties of meditation for treating stomach ache. He went on to suggest swimming as the cure to anxiety and almost everything else and, encouraged by my receptiveness, he invited me to his home and to show me around the next day. At the end of the ritual they applied rice on my forehead. Good for my chakras, I guess?!

Mosquitoes did me a favour by waking me up in time for the eclipse and at 4 am the chanting began…

Next morning, I arrived with a taxi in Singaraja, the first town of considerable size, whose name means “Lion King”. Then, a change to bemo (small van where you have to bend forward in order to fit and the doors remains open, good fun) to get to the correct station. From there a small shuttle bus to Denpasar which is the capital in the South. The fresh air of Bali’s central mountain range was welcome. It was Saturday and schoolchildren were marching on the streets, as they normally do in Indonesia. “Baris Berbaris”, literally a line lined up (Indonesians love reduplication).

The `Bali museum’ in Denspasar is worth visiting for a fast track introduction into the Balinese culture, and impressive as a building itself. From there I took a motorcycle taxi to Ubud, passing though the very dense traffic that converges to the super-developed cultural capital of Bali.

Third morning, exiting my hostel room, I hear the following not so typical dialogue: “Did you feel the earthquake this morning?” “Seriously? I thought you were masturbating in the bed above. ” I open the news and read: 6.4 Richter in Lombok’s Rinjani Volcano, casualties and hundreds of climbers trapped from landslides. But I haven’t felt it at all and there was no second thought of amending the route. I purposed to an Englishman, W., to rent a motorbike to explore the island. With 75,000 rupees, we got in record time the keys to a 125cc Honda, helmets and the blessings of the lady in the kiosk just outside.

Having W. as the navigator through the complex road network we reached the gates of Luhur Batukaru temple at the altitude of 1300 meters, in midst of the misty tropical forest.

Next we stopped in a buffet restaurant over UNESCO protected Jatiluwih rice terraces (we had to pay a toll), were W. told me about his goal of sailing around the world non-stop, a bold endeavour that few have achieved. Then, I decided to visit a small tea plantation and hotel nearby – it seemed unique in a coffee growing island. And soon we ended talking to a person whose ambition was even bigger than W.’s.

E., the owner, was somewhat surprised, but invited us without hesitation in his comfortable palace on a slope overlooking a pool and lush forest. Javan in origin, he protested when sent to become a sailor, not wanting a boss over his head. So, he started with a ticket for Bali and 15,000 rupees in his pocket, at some point in the early 70’s. Working here and there, he found that tourists, who had begun arriving in Bali, were buying jean jackets and so he started selling them. The jeans became leather which he brought from Java, and so gradually he managed to build a business based on leather. And at the same time, he opened a nightclub, the first surfing company in Bali, which he sold to Rip Curl, and expedition company, a health centre etc.. ‘Capital is fair,’ he told us, showing us his collection of dried tea. ‘You just need motivation and ideas’. At some point in the 1990s, his mother called him: “You a Muslim man making money from selling alcohol in parties?”. E. reflected on this, and decided to buy this land on a mountain that no one wanted, and to build his small garden of Eden. Now he enjoys his new ‘toy’, the first tea plantation in Bali, with his second wife and daughter who has an English boyfriend, and prays 5 times a day on his balcony over the clouds.