Bali may be one of Asia’s most heavily touristed destinations but it’s still possible to get off the beaten track and find something underappreciated on the Island of the Gods. Here are seven lesser known yet rewarding attractions and curiosities on the Indonesian holiday island. His is an artform born out of both inspiration and necessity, Pak Wayan Gama tells me, inside his small, street-front studio, its walls filled with framed works of art.
An intricate style of Balinese painting laden with Hindu mythology and compressed on tiny canvases emerged in the 1970s. Miniature paintings evolved to allow artists in mountainside Keliki village to make a living from the island’s burgeoning tourism industry. For nearly 50 years, Keliki’s gifted painters have fed their families by selling their work to tourists.
In recent years, they’ve opened tourist workshops in this time-warp village ensconced in jungle about 8km north of Ubud. The artists relay the mythology of Hindu gods such as Brahman and Shiva, who are often depicted in the paintings amid bucolic Balinese scenery. Many of Pak Wayan Gama’s students stay at the nearby Capella Ubud, a luxury resort that offers guests immersive cultural experiences that include Keliki painting lessons.
Tenganan is all about its bloody spectacles. While still a fairly low-profile attraction, the village – a 50km drive east of Ubud – has been gaining social media attention for its unique and violent gladiator battles, called Makare-kare. Each June, the contests see male residents of Tenganan fight with pandan-leaf whips as part of a centuries-old Hindu custom.
But these fierce battles are just one of many aspects of Tenganan’s well-preserved culture. More than 500 years ago, Bali’s indigenous Aga people built this village using a unique layout. From above, it resembles a giant finger: stone-and-wood buildings lining a long, slender town square.
The traditionalism embodied in its appearance is matched by Tenganan’s lifestyles; I encounter children playing on a towering bamboo swing, women weaving Batik skirts and men crafting penjor ceremonial poles. Few places in Bali remain so deeply rooted to their past. Bali’s status as the only Hindu-majority island in a Muslim-majority nation is connected to an ancient empire and a timeworn mosque, the gilded accents and sublime minaret of Nurul Huda Gelgel having been erected in the 1600s.
Open to general visitors as well as worshippers, the mosque is 15km east of Ubud and 2km south of the remains of the Klungkung Palace, seat of Bali’s final kingdom, which was conquered in 1908 by the Dutch, ending centuries of rule over this island by Hindu dynasties. The Majapahit empire had embedded Hinduism on Bali in the 1520s and the Nurul Huda Gelgel was built decades later by Muslim missionaries aiming to turn Bali into an Islamic stronghold. They failed, but have left behind a handsome mosque woven into a unique historical tale.
Bali’s crawling traffic introduces me to a murderous yet benevolent giant. Many of the island’s roads are so clogged by vehicles that tourists have ample time to study the tall statues positioned in the middle of roundabouts or traffic islands. That’s how I meet Kebo Iwa, heroic destroyer of supernatural monsters.
His stone likeness looms over a busy thoroughfare in Gianyar, 5km southeast of Ubud. As my taxi crawls past, I ask the driver to pause so I can admire this warrior, who is draped in golden jewellery and brandishes a whip. Kebo Iwa is renowned throughout Bali as a mystical force who protected the island.
Folklore describes him as a massive man who warded off evil spirits with his might and prevented Bali from being invaded by the Majapahit empire. It wasn’t until after Kebo Iwa had died that Bali fell to the Hindu invaders, in the mid-14th century. The fearsome blade shimmering before me is curved like a slithering serpent, yet it is more potent than even the deadliest of snakes.
This is a keris, a style of dagger that has been a weapon, amulet and ornament in Indonesia for a millennium or more. Dozens of splendid specimens are among the ancient weapons showcased at the Bali Museum. Housed in a complex of traditional Balinese buildings, which resembles a Hindu temple, this facility tends to be overlooked by tourists.
Being in Denpasar doesn’t help; Bali’s crowded capital is less popular than Ubud, Kuta, Legian, Seminyak and Nusa Dua. Those who seek out the museum will be rewarded, though. Beyond its weapons are displays of ceramics, furniture, sculptures, paintings, masks, textiles, musical instruments, religious relics and royal artefacts.
English language signage helps explain the significance and history of many of the exhibits. Hundreds of faces surround me inside a teak wood building abutted by jungle. Some glare with evil intent, others bear muted expressions or are apparently laughing hysterically.
Each represents a character depicted by Wayang Kulit – a form of shadow puppetry traditionally found on Java and Bali, and which is a key theme of the Setia Darma House of Mask and Puppets. The museum is housed inside four traditional Joglo homes, which were relocated from Java to the southeastern outskirts of Ubud. It showcases the vast collection of Hadi Sunyoto, an Indonesian businessman who was worried about the fading relevance of shadow puppetry.
Wayang Kulit plays – in which hand-cut leather puppets are given life behind a backlit sheet, throwing shadows that depict scenes from Hindu folklore – are still staged across Bali, but the tools of the trade can be inspected in detail at Setia Darma. Its key focus is Indonesian masks and puppets, of which it has more than 1,000, but the museum also exhibits pieces from across the world. The stories behind each are recounted in English language signage.
The sand is dark, the salt crystalline and the ocean backdrop a cobalt blue at the Kusamba salt farms. Bali’s many black sand beaches have long fascinated tourists, and few are as striking as that at Kusamba, on the island’s tranquil southeast coast. My driver knew I was a photographer in search of distinctive images so he diverted here after we visited the tourist magnet of Goa Lawah, also known as the bat temple.
Kusamba’s salt farmers, who are also fishermen, invite tourists to watch them work in exchange for a small donation. Before me a middle-aged man carries seawater in two palm-leaf buckets connected to a pole strung over his shoulders. The liquid is dumped onto a patch of compacted volcanic sand and left to evaporate.
Later he will remove the top layer of this sand, place it inside long, hollowed-out logs, wet it further, wait for the salt in the sand to crystallise, and then wash away the sand to reveal small chunks of salt. The whole process, refined over more than 1,000 years, takes several days and the resulting naturally crystallised sea salt is sold on to shops and suppliers. You can even leave with your own small bag, as a memento of the Bali not every tourist is familiar with.
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