Getting there & around
Garuda Indonesia lies non-stop from
Heathrow to Bali, via Jakarta on return.
Emirates, Cathay Paciic, Malaysia
Airlines and Singapore Airlines also ly
from the UK to Bali with connections.
garuda-indonesia.com emirates.com
cathaypaciic.com malaysiaairlines.com
singaporeair.com
Average light time: 17h.
Car hire is available throughout Bali but
taxis are an easier, more affordable way
to get around. Blue Bird Taxis is
considered the most reliable.
bluebirdgroup.com
When to go
Bali’s weather is tropical year-round,
ranging from 28-35C, often with daily
showers. April-June and September are
the best months to travel as the
humidity is at its most bearable.
Places mentioned
I Nyoman Sujana Kenyem.
facebook.com/sujanakenyem
Agung Rai Museum of Art.
armabali.com/museum
Neka Art Museum. museumneka.com
Keliki painting. facebook.com/
kelikitraditionalpainting
Purpa Fine Art Gallery.
purpagallerybali.com
Teguh Ritma Iman.
facebook.com/iman.ritma
Where to stay
Four Seasons Resort Bali At Jimbaran
Bay. fourseasons.com
Alila Manggis. alilahotels.com
Four Seasons Resort Bali At Sayan.
fourseasons.com
Capella Ubud. capellahotels.com
How to do it
CARRIER offers 10 nights in Bali from
£4,955 per person, including three
nights at Capella Ubud, two nights at
Four Seasons Sayan, ive nights at Four
Seasons Jimbaran Bay, B&B, based on
two sharing. It also includes the Artist
Trails experience at Capella Ubud,
return lights, private car transfers and
the Fast Track Voyager service at
Heathrow. carrier.co.uk
ESSENTIALS
Rice paddies,
Karangasempapier-mache incarnations of Conan the
Barbarian and a not-so-jolly Green Giant pass
among the pagodas of Amlapura’s temple,
stopping for families to take selies. Balinese
kids don’t scare easily.
Ngrupuk — Bali’s New Year’s Eve
celebrations — sees demons roused from
their slumber with a monster party. Ogoh-
ogoh eigies, the pride of communities
island-wide, are surreal works of folk art
that take months to make. I watch as these
gorgons get their inal touches of hair and
make-up under banyan tree-shaded side
streets — a drop of blood to a fang here,
some backcombing of a matted beard there
— before I choose a loat to follow. They
snake through Amlapura’s centre. The call
and response of the kulkul band leads us to a
temple, into which the ogoh-ogoh vanish (at
least for non-Hindi), most destined to end up
in a pyre of ceremonial smoke.
And then: silence. Nyepi — New Year’s Day
— brings 24 hours of complete inertia and
hush, boring those demons back to bed for
another year. Everything shuts — airports,
seaports, radio and TV stations, power grids;
streets are deserted as people retreat indoors
for a strictly observed day of dormancy.
In my hotel, on eastern Bali’s rice paddy-
fringed shores, the only sound is of the waves
raking the grainy volcanic sand. My voice
lowers to an insentient whisper. By nightfall,
when all lights must be extinguished or
windows blackened out, I feel like I’ve
stepped into one of Kenyem’s paintings
— into a circular meditative silence, of sea,
sky, earth — still keeping one eye open for
the sabre-tooth grin of the barong.on a scrufy, tree-lined Denpasar street.
Scores of paintings by Iman’s esteemed
artist father, Sumatran-born Roesli Hakim,
line walls of the ground-loor oice, while
works by his teenage nascent-artist son
deck the adjoining family home; upstairs
Iman’s studio is doubly layered with stacked
canvasses and piles of sketches.
“My father taught at STSI — we’ve
inherited his teachings,” smiles Iman.
Bold, bright blocks of colour unite their
work, Iman’s igurative portraits the most
distinctive, oten featuring expressionistic
ish, leaves, birds; many of women. “I see so
much power in Balinese women. They have
strength, but also much to give.”
Seeking the colourful low-key coastal life
that oten inspires Iman, I leave Denpasar.
“Go east,” they all said when I asked what
had become of the Bali I remembered from
my irst trips to the island — long before
Seminyak morphed into a shopping mall and
Ubud became a movie set. “Go east,” they’d
responded again, when I’d asked if the Bali I
saw in paintings could still be found.
So, as the artists and gallerists instructed,
I head to Bali’s most easterly point, where
the island’s ish-shaped form noses into
Lombok Strait. Here, under the omnipresent
peak of Mount Agung, I ind not tranquillity
but chaos. Monsters are roaming the streets:
16t ‘ogoh-ogoh’ ogres baring blackened teeth
the size of tombstones, trailing long nets of
fetid hair, bulbous feet raised in a warrior
pose, jiggling to the percussive hammering
of an attendant kulkul band and kohl-eyed,
barefoot dancers. Not strictly styled on
demons of the Hindu pantheon, creepy122 nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel
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