Up to the Volcano
A private day in Bali's highlands: a volcano across a crater lake, coffee on a plantation terrace, a swing over the jungle and the art market in Ubud.
The driver collects you from the hotel lobby in the morning, and the car is yours until the evening. Today is a long loop through the middle of the island, climbing from the warm lowlands to the rim of a volcano and back down again, and the order of the stops follows the weather: the highlands are clearest early, and the cloud tends to gather after lunch.
The road north climbs steadily through villages where every house stands inside its own walled compound, with a carved gateway at the front and a family temple in the corner. Stone carvers work at the roadside with finished statues lined up beside them. The air cools, the palms give way to pines and vegetable plots, and at some point you realise you would quite like the jacket you left in the room.
Kintamani is a ridge town at around 1,500 metres, strung out along the rim of an enormous ancient caldera. You get out of the car at a viewpoint, walk to the railing, and the ground falls away in front of you.
Mount Batur
Across the caldera stands Mount Batur, an active volcano, dark and bare on its upper slopes, with black lava fields spread across the floor below it from the eruptions of the last century. Beside it, filling the eastern side of the crater, lies Lake Batur, a long crescent of blue-grey water. Behind them both, on a clear morning, the higher peak of Mount Abang rises along the far rim.
It is a view that works on scale. The lake is big, and the volcano is bigger, and the caldera holding them both is so large that the ridge you are standing on is only one edge of it. It takes a while to understand that the whole bowl in front of you is what is left of a far larger mountain that collapsed in on itself.
Batur is one of Bali's sacred mountains, and its lake is revered as a source of the water that irrigates farmland across much of the island. That is worth knowing, because before the day is out you will see where some of that water goes.
The whole bowl in front of you is what is left of a far larger mountain that collapsed in on itself.
Coffee, and the water
On the way back down, the car stops at a coffee plantation: a garden of coffee bushes, cacao, vanilla vines and spice trees, with a covered terrace at the end looking out over the valley. Somebody walks you through the plants, then shows you beans being roasted by hand in a clay pan over a wood fire, which is slower and smokier than you would think and makes the whole place smell wonderful.
At the terrace a tray arrives with a row of small cups, usually free to taste: several coffees, a few teas, a cocoa. This is also where you meet Luwak coffee, made from beans that have passed through a civet before being collected, cleaned and roasted. Whether you try it is your call. It is normally sold by the cup, and it has as many admirers as it has people who think it tastes a great deal like coffee.
Depending on your package, the next stop is either the rice terraces at Tegalalang or the waterfall at Tegenungan. At Tegalalang the terraces step down both sides of a steep valley, fed by the subak, the centuries-old system of shared channels that carries water down through every field in turn. At Tegenungan the river pours over a wide ledge into a pool at the bottom of a jungle gorge, reached by a long flight of steps that feels considerably longer on the way back up.
The swing, and the market
The Bali Jungle Swing is exactly what it sounds like: a very long swing hung from a high platform over a jungle valley, with a harness, a seat and a crew who strap you in and push. It is built unapologetically for the camera, and plenty of people hire the long flowing dresses that make the photographs look the way they do. It is also genuinely thrilling. There is a moment at the far end of the arc when you seem to hang in the air above the treetops, and nobody has yet kept a straight face at that point.
The last stop is Ubud Art Market, in the middle of town across the road from the old royal palace. It is a warren of stalls selling sarongs, baskets, carvings, silver, paintings and a very large number of bags. Prices start high and are expected to come down, so bargain cheerfully, walk away if you mean it, and do not be surprised when you are called back.
Lunch is not part of the day, so tell the driver when you are hungry. He will stop at a warung he likes, and that will almost always be better than anywhere with a coach park.
There is a moment at the far end of the swing when you seem to hang in the air above the trees. Nobody keeps a straight face at that point.
The drive back to the hotel is quieter and slower than the drive out, because Ubud's traffic is at its worst late in the day. Most people doze. You arrive with a bag of market shopping you did not strictly need, and a phone full of volcano.
Experience Up to the Volcano
Mount Batur, a coffee plantation, the jungle swing and Ubud Art Market, in one private day. Tell us your dates and we will build it into your Bali trip.
