National Geographic Traveller

IMAGES: AWL IMAGES; GETTY

sni of Bali’s richly perfumed air — all clove

cigarettes and pungent frangipani — would

be the ruin of me? How was I to know that

each violent electrical storm would rewire

my resolve to leave, rooting me to the ground,

eyes to the sky like one newly aware of our

planet’s eternal rumbling? Decades later,

faced with that same heady air on arrival at

Denpasar, I’m as wrong-footed as I was then.

And I still don’t really know why.

If this had been a better story, an Eat, Pray,

Love narrative that jogged along with boys

and dinners and spiritual awakenings, I

could fi nd cause for this craziness. But it’s

not. Decades before the Balinese town of

Ubud had become the subject of Hollywood’s

spiritual awakening, it had ensnared

generations of European artists, misfi ts and

dri‚ ers with its gentle welcome, vivid

colours and handsomely represented

panoply of gods; and so, too, me. The

indefi nable juju of the place: its air, its light,

its tropical whi s and winds swamped any

sensible Cartesian spirit, turning me into

a gibbering hippie.

So I didn’t leave. Four days quickly turned

into four months. A homestay took me in,

and fed me each morning on eggs haloed

with yokes the colour of temple gold. They

did my laundry; I walked their dogs. It was

no more complicated than that. I’d

somehow come home.

Friends of the homestay came and went

and, as was the way of the place, I came and

went with them, eventually to leave the fresh

laundry, dogs and eggs in favour of free digs

in a patchy patchwork of paddy fi elds outside

Denpasar, colonised by a collective of

elaborately tattooed artists. For want of

enough willing fl esh, the gang had carved,

painted and etched every available table,

door frame and leaky ceiling in their

ramshackle house with acid-hued colours

and spectacular, fantastical creatures,

creating a mesmeric decorative landscape

only challenged by sunsets that came

crashing down outside with a Technicolor

equatorial regularity, at 6pm on the dot. Safe

to say, I was stupefi ed.

I did leave Bail eventually. Months later, it

simply became time to move on. I’d somehow

managed to avoid being tattooed by the clan,

but I took with me something much more

indelible — the strongest, embarrassingly

evangelical sense that Bali is a place I’m

always meant to return to. Even a‚ er going

back with grown-up, worldly experience to

bolster me, I still fi nd myself blubbering

anew at each departure, as if being ripped

from the place I’m really destined to be.

Ubud market

OPPOSITE: Rice fi elds around

Tegalalang, near Ubud

November 2016 81

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