Lake Batur

I'm in very hip Ubud now, which is crawling with tourists, for good reason, its a very nice and interesting place to be with a lot to offer, and to have my last days in Bali. After Padangbai which my bad cold might have made seems a more negative experience than it was, (how bad can a beach in Bali be afterall) I had two beautiful days at Lake Batur in the mountains and felt I really recovered, at least I had the energy one day for several continuous walks from 9am to nearly 4.

I found this path near the lake, its a raised area that prevents the lake water from flooding the farmers fields. I'm not sure if was an official path, but it did just fine and nobody told me otherwise. I walked along it quite a long way until it ended, this is a view into the farms

tree shrine and boat from my walk

There was not much if any town, but that was not necessary as there was a spectacular botanical garden and the lake itself and the extremely picturesque Pura Ula Danau temple. The weather seemed to change constantly as you will see from the many photos I took of the temple sitting in the lake. I didn't bring my other card from the camera, but it actually was sunny part of the time and I have some nice shots of a sunset that I'll post later. In the botanical gardens it went from a light rain to a heavy rain (I found a covered temple area to sit it out in luckily) back to a light rain, to a complete white-out fog, to sun and the clearest weather I've seen, all in about 2 hours.

After I left there I walked around a serpentine main road to another path on the side of the lake that was supposed to lead to a "Japanese cave" and then a walk to a very high temple. After some trial and error and about an hour walk on the wrong path, I found the Japanese cave. It looked like something out of Indiana Jones so no way I was going inside of it, but I never did find the path to the temple but had a nice walk anyway. Because it is rainy season, the path might have been overgrown.

Lake Batur, Pura Ulun Danu temple


Lake Batur again

More Lake Batur

Lake Batur at dusk (check back for Sunny Lake Batur!)

SUNNY Lake Batur



Like in Willimantic, the Lake Batur temple has frog guardians, though here they don't have spools to sit on. This frog has a bird guardian on its head.

Ancient Buddhist stupa at the Hindu temple of Lake Batur

Its fun to be here in Ubud, there are three main streets, one called Monkey Forest Road, and they are lined with shops, so there is a lot to poke around and look at, including many temples, palaces and walks out into less populated areas. Tomorrow I'll go to the temples at Monkey Forest sanctuary, though the monkeys themselves are said to be nasty creatures and I have no walking stick like John Craig had in India, to defend myself with, but do have a big umbrella which may suffice, as it rains on an off quite a bit, often in terrifically strong monsoons, so one always has to have an umbrella handy. The one I bought in Yogja is huge, for these kind of very serious but often quite short rains.

Since I came early and my reservation started the 15th I found a nice room in a rambling old stone building, but its rather dank and dark so I'm glad to be moving to the hotel I reserved for my last days here, I stopped by today and its the lap of luxury with a lot of tile, and big airy balcony. I have two writing projects to finish while I'm here so mid days will be spent there writing and early mornings are for walking around. At night there are cultural performances at many venues in and out town, some in villages, but a mini-bus at the very well organized tourist office takes people there for free, there is something going on every night. They have really worked hard in this city to preserve many of the traditional arts. After that, so many nice places to eat with international fare, the other night I had a delicious stone pizza, but mostly I love Indonesian food and a nice cool local beer.

I have shockingly fast email here that loads the photos in moments, this is not in any way normal, its only because the card reader on the other computers would not work, so I'm using the internet managers own mac and its pouring rain outside now anyway, so I'm taking good advantage of the chance to load a lot of photos

fog after the rains, Bali botanical gardens Lake Batur

huge Banyan tree, Bali Botanical gardens

Snake (naga) shrine,a temple in the Bali Botanical gardens

after the rains, from the main road, if you look carefully, you can see the edge of Bali, that's what finally made me realize that Bali is probably smaller in size than the state of Connecticut

Snake Guardian at a temple

cat guardian at a temple, his funny square hat is a little "offering" from the way he looks, I'd be quick to appease him too. The real temple guardian however was a very large barking dog that I decided to take no chances with, as much as I was dying to see the shrine that was under the large tree in the back, but didn't want to content with a displeased god (dog)

If not for the temple dog, I would have gotten a closer look at the shrine under the very old looking tree

temple ceremony, these go on all the time, often stopping traffic, but wonderful to observe. Men wear long colorful patterned sarongs and a white "Nehru" collar shirt and turban

these kind of little "offerings" are everywhere, made of simple palm and flowers, offerings to the gods, sometimes there are crackers, for the hungry gods