From the Lakes to the Sea

A private day from the cool, misty hills of Bedugul to a temple standing on a rock in the surf, by way of a gate that frames the mountains.

Words by Ishaan Rebello Bedugul, Bali · 5 min read

The driver collects you from the hotel in the morning, and the day runs from the top of the island to its edge: up into the hills around Bedugul, across to the old volcanic lakes, and back down to the coast for the afternoon at Tanah Lot. It is a lot of driving. It is also the best way to see how much Bali can change over a short distance.

The road north leaves the suburbs and the traffic behind and starts to climb. The rice fields give way to vegetable gardens, strawberry farms and roadside stalls selling fruit in small plastic baskets, and then to thick forest. By the time you reach the highlands, well over a thousand metres up, the air is cool and damp, and there is a real chance you will drive straight into cloud.

Nobody in Bedugul is surprised by mist. It rolls over the ridge, fills the valley, and clears again twenty minutes later as though nothing happened. If the first viewpoint is white when you arrive, wait. It usually lifts.

Mist rolling over forested hills and down to a lake in the Bedugul highlands — Cloud rolling over the hills and down to the lake. In Bedugul it clears almost as fast as it arrives.

Wanagiri and the gate

The Wanagiri hills run along a ridge above two lakes, Buyan and Tamblingan, which lie side by side in the forest below. Along the road, local families have built wooden viewing platforms out over the drop: swings, giant nests, heart-shaped frames and little decks hanging over nothing. Each charges a small fee to step out onto it, and the view from all of them is the same one, the twin lakes in their forest with cloud moving across the far ridge.

The Handara Gate is a short drive away. It is a traditional Balinese split gate, the kind that stands at the entrance to temples all over the island, set at the start of a long drive at the edge of a golf resort, with the green hills rising behind it. Photographed straight on, the two halves of the gate frame the mountains between them, and that single photograph has become one of the most shared images of Bali.

Expect a queue, a small fee, and somebody with a phone who will take the picture for you from exactly the right spot. Let them. They have taken that photograph thousands of times, and they know precisely where to stand so the road runs straight through the middle of the gate.

Nobody in Bedugul is surprised by mist. If the view is white when you arrive, wait twenty minutes.

The Handara Gate, a Balinese split gate with green hills behind it — The Handara Gate, with the hills framed between its two halves.

The temple on the lake

Ulun Danu Beratan stands on the western shore of Lake Beratan, and parts of it seem to float. Its tall tiered shrines stand on small islands just off the bank, so that on a still morning they appear on the water twice, once upright and once reflected. It is so much a part of how Bali sees itself that it has appeared on the fifty-thousand rupiah note, which you may well have in your wallet already.

The temple dates from the seventeenth century and is dedicated to Dewi Danu, goddess of the lake, whose water flows down to irrigate the farmland below. People from the surrounding villages still bring offerings here, and on ceremony days the grounds fill with families dressed in white and gold, carrying tall arrangements of fruit and flowers.

The gardens around it are wide, green and well kept, and in the cool of the hills this is one of the most pleasant places on the island simply to walk. Give it longer than you think you need. The mist comes and goes over the water, and the temple looks different every time it clears.

A carved shrine and gateway at Ulun Danu Beratan, beside the lake — Carved stone and thatch at Ulun Danu Beratan, with cloud sitting on the hills across the lake.

Tanah Lot

The drive down from the hills to the west coast is almost all downhill: back through the vegetable farms, down into the rice, and out towards the sea, which you smell before you see it. Tanah Lot sits at the end of a long approach lined with shops and warungs, and then the lane opens out onto dark rock and surf.

The temple stands on a large rock just offshore, its shrines rising from the top among a few wind-bent trees. At low tide you can walk across to the base of the rock, where there is a freshwater spring and where priests bless visitors with holy water and a few grains of rice pressed to the forehead. At high tide the rock is cut off completely, and the waves break against it hard enough to throw spray over the people watching from the shore.

The temple itself is open to worshippers only, and that is the right way round. What visitors come for is the sight of it: a small, dark, carved shape standing in the ocean with nothing behind it but horizon. Local belief holds that the rock is guarded by sea snakes living in the crevices at its base, and it is a story people here tell with complete seriousness.

At high tide the rock is cut off completely, and the sea throws spray over the people watching from the shore.

Stay on the cliffs into the late afternoon if the day allows. Tanah Lot at sunset is one of the most visited sights in Bali for good reason, and the drive back will be slow whenever you leave, so you may as well leave after the light has gone.