We carried on staying in Ubud on Bali for a couple more days after I wrote the last blog. If I had to give a theme to those two days (and I don't need much encouragement to think up wittily appropriate titles for things), then it would be "the pedal power days".
The first of those two days (last Wednesday, I think) we went on a bicycle tour around the local area with Bali Budaya Eco cycling tours. Put next to our challenging daily budget of £27 per diem (which - like eating camel - is tough, but not impossible (so I'm told)), the cost of tour was pretty hefty, but our homestay host assured us he was getting us a Great Deal and the feedback from the tour on TripAdvisor was good. So, we though "Stuff the budget! Let's go cycling!".
And I tell you what, you really do get what you pay for, don't you?
We were picked up from our very front door and driven to our first location of the day. All the way there our lovely young tour guide told us about Balinese culture and cheerfully explained that he was partly using his job to try and find a nice wife, this being only reasonable having reached the age of 23. He explained that it was especially important for him to find himself a wife because he was the youngest son and so would inherit the family home from his parents (as he will live longest and get most use out of it, apparently). We also found out that sometimes young Balinese people will be MBA ("married by accident", nudge nudge), which was interesting enough in itself; then we found out that that MBA is often not an accident at all because the young man in question (often the youngest, and burdened with the duty of family heredity) wants to make sure that his chosen one will be capable of having his children before he commits himself to the whole marrying thing.
That and other fascinating facts were explained to us as we drove all the way up to a volcano called Gunung Batur. In fact we were dropped off at a restaurant and here they insisted that we eat a delicious buffet breakfast (second free breakfast in fact, after the one at the hotel) whilst looking at one of the most beautiful views ever. We were on a inner rim of a huge caldera and rising from below us in the middle of the crater was the new cone of the main volcano. Between us and that cone was a really rather fetching lake twinkling in the morning sun.
So we ate and stared and had a lovely time, then we piled into the bus again to be taken to a coffee plantation. But this was no ordinary coffee plantation. Oh no. The success of this one hinged on some weird fox-like cats called Luaks which were specially trained to eat coffee beans. You can guess where this is going can't you? You'd be right. We saw all the detailed and slightly icky stages of the coffee-making procedure and it was surprising - or maybe not - to find out that passing through a cat can actually make quite a difference to a coffee bean. You could really tell the difference between that and the normal stuff. It was only an extra £2 to actually try the coffee, so naturally we did and, compared to the non-cat-processed version it was a very smooth cuppa indeed.
That done, it was off to find our bikes and set off on the main part of our journey. Because Bali's geography is really quite simple - high at the volcanoes in the middle(ish) and then downhill all the way to the sea - the tour could gleefully advertise that the whole bike riding part is downhill. Which it is. Amazing. We coasted downhill for about three hours I think.
But there were plenty of stops on the way. Our tour guide pulled up outside a family home and explained to us what we were seeing. That might sound weird, but Balinese people live in compounds rather than houses and to be honest it is a bit confusing. The compound is a wall around a piece of land and within that there are generally little bedroom-houses (the nicest for the oldest members), a kitchen-house for each wife/family (because women sharing a kitchen will inevitably argue about who does what, you see - so they each have their own) and a small temple. Our homestay in Ubud was actually one of these compounds, but they had added bedroom-houses for paying tourists. We found out that a street of compounds makes a banjar (community) and one or more banjars can make a village or town. The banjar is self-regulating and apparently the tidier the place, the better the banjar leaders are at doing their job.
All of this we learned as we were walked around the compound of a fairly random family along the way. We met the family working in their bamboo-weaving workshop (also on their compound) and checked out their animals out the back, including their cash cow. Just before we left our guide told - us a little sadly - that there were no eligible young ladies left in this household. And so we cycled on.
After seeing many more banjars and some lovely paddy fields (where families will own a field and single farmer is employed by many different families to grow rice there - the opposite of our ye olde system) we were told that if we wanted to we could attempt an uphill cycle. Only four of us took it up - me and Si (of course), a super-fit German gent and an Irish gap-year girl. Despite the really hot weather, the cycle wasn't NEARLY as bad as the north Cornish coast and so Si and I walked it really, along with the German guy who was a small but perfectly formed cycling machine. Irish girl bailed at the point when our guide gave us free reign to go off ahead, though we only found out when she sailed past us on the back of a rescue scooter laughing and saying something which sounded a lot like "see you later losers!".
Then at the end, we were - again - forced to eat a delicious buffet lunch and generally have a lovely time.
Worth it!
The next day we were so enthusiastic about cycling that Si and I hired bikes ourselves and made up our own journey. Unfortunately we didn't have a van to take us to a convenient starting point, so we had to do the uphill bit as well. But it really wasn't that bad, the gradient was barely noticeable. Again, nothing like Cornwall.
First we cycled up to a small town who's main attraction is glorious views of a paddy field terraces. And they really are glorious - a great place for lunch. We avoided having our photo taken by a cheerful and savvy old man with a pointy hat and baskets full of grass on a pole over his shoulder, and we sailed past the guys who ask cars for bribes on entering the village. So we definately made up some of our money from the day before too!
Next we headed to the sixth most important Hindu temple on Bali called Tirta Empul. It's centred around a spring which wells up in a breathtakingly pretty walled enclosure at it's centre. The water is then funnelled out through into fountains towards the front of the temple where many Hindus were washing and praying, either individually or as family groups. As I stood there, sticky with sweat after cycling on a blisteringly hot day and slowly baking still, I really had to fight the urge to convert to Hinduism on the spot and jump into that pool alongside them.
Next stop was yet another temple, Gunung Kawi, based further down the same stream that started at Tirta Empul. Generally village temples on Bali come in threes: one upstream (like Tirta Enpul) where the theme is creation; one in the middle of the village, which is the day-to-day temple; and one downstream, which is all about death and funerals. Gunung Kawi is a day-to-day temple, it's attraction is that it's set in a gorge and eight huge shrines have been carved out of the sheer cliff faces on either side. It was a beautiful and serene place. The stream from the water temple washed through the gorge here, gurgling quietly beneath the great cliffs and small waterfalls fell from the tops of the cliffs onto trees all around the temple which themselves dripped in the golden afternoon sunlight.
While we were at this second temple, we happened to cross paths with a group of seven or eight 10-year-old children who seemed to be performing some ritual. We first saw them laughing as they walked down to the temple, then we bumped into them in the temple proper as they were all kneeling in front of a shrine and prayed quietly, and then finally we saw them again as they larked about in the river at the bottom of the gorge. What struck me was that they did all this quietly and resectfully with absolutely no adult supervision at all. They seemed like really lovely kids. That added to the calm, peaceful mood of the place for me.
Or maybe it was broodyness. We'll never know. In any case it was lovely.
Day nearly done and sights all seen, we reversed course on our trusty two-wheeled steeds and freewheeled back to Ubud. It took us an hour, going as fast as we could. Amazing. Don't worry though family, it wasn't that fast really as the gradient was pretty gentle. Though I did overtake a scooter at one point...
In conclusion. Bikes are a most excellent way of seeing beautiful Bali.