After Tulamben, we kept on driving around Bali - while stressful at the beginning, driving actually proved to be an excellent choice as it allowed us to easily reach remote regions of the island.

Distances seemed to get smaller, as there’s much less traffic on the northern side of Bali, allowing us to cruise at an average 50 km/h. We decided to go up one of the volcanoes - the crater is now filled with a lake, whose water is used for irrigating the rice paddies all around.

We had a small rest there

and got a shot of the local kids passing by

We then arrived in Munduk, on the north-western side of the mountain, where we decided to stay for the night - the accommodation wasn’t cheap, but the view was worth it

In the afternoon, we took a hike around Munduk to a waterfall. The village is surrounded by plantations of cloves (clou de girofle)…

… vanilla…

… cocoa…

… and coffee:

As a matter of fact, it’s mostly cloves (and it’s a flower, did you know? we didn’t ;-), and its sweet scent is all around the place, as the cloves are sun dried along the road

at first it’s greenish, and it becomes brown

other things (which we didn’t always recognize) also dry along

Roland took a bit of cocoa to try it out: very bitter!

and the drying herbs make a confortable mattress

you can find stuff drying virtually everywhere: in the courtyard, or any other flat surface exposed to the sun!

After a 1-hour walk, we reached the waterfall

Kath is enjoying the cool and wet breeze from the waterfall

Walking back, we noticed people picking the cloves, from the top of the trees:

They actually use huge bamboo ladders

On the negative side, most of the time, mangy dogs bark at you as you walk along, but they also pick in the garbage - we were quite careful with them, as Bali is currently suffering a wide epidemic of rabies cases from dog or monkey bites!

Quiet evening on our private patio…

And, in the morning, breakfast served directly on our patio

We then hit the road again, and met some monkeys on the road

Quite lovely creatures, and apparently friendly, but really we don’t want to be biten (even though we did get a rabies shot ;-)

People throw them food from their car, so I imagine that’s the reason why they stay along the road

Shortly after, we arrived at the lakeside temple

featuring the usual statues…

and the trees dressed with sarong

we wandered around the park…

meditating Roland…

That evening, we reached Ubud which was our final destination in Bali - it’s like the cultural place in Bali, and the streets are lined up with stores selling local craft and art…

or masks…

and some less arty things

of course, as everywhere else in Bali, you have to be careful not to stop on or over the offerings that are renewed every day

it looks like it could include a various range of things, mostly flowers and food like rice, but also some wrapped crackers sometimes

The town also have a monkey sanctuary in a place called “the Monkey forrest” - we didn’t go, but the monkeys came to us on the street

This town is most famous for its shows displaying traditional Balinese music and dance. So after securing our accommodation, we got tickets for the show!
There are a few playing each evening; we chose a dance featuring an episode of the epic Ramayana story, followed by the “fire dance”.

At first, a priest (or whatever it’s called ;-) gives offereing on the stage, which is centered on the fire.

Then, about a hundred men came singing onto the stage and circled the fired

There were no instruments - they sang and sat around the fire all along the show, telling the story while characters came on and off the stage, enacting the story and dancing around the fire

All the characters came from this gate, at the top of a short flight of stairs

One of them is Rama, who kills the villain in the end

Here is a couple of videos - enjoy the music!

We really enjoyed it, and were quite happy to have seen the show: even though it’s probably formated for tourists, it was great to hear these hundred men singing together, and the story reminded Kath of the story they played at the community centre when she was a kid ;-)

The main characters, saluting at the end of the show

Unfortunately, it started to rain on the open stage at the end of the show, so there wasn’t much of a fire dance, but it was still impressive: basically, a man enters a trance a kicks into burning coconut shells, walking on the coals.

The next day, we did nothing else other than planning our ongoing trip to Lombok: a 12-hour journey with bus, ferry and bus again to Senggigi. It turned out to be a shaggy, old-looking and terribly slow boat.

Fortunately, having a laptop allowed us to write this article, and hence kept us busy during the ride, until we arrived along the white-sand beaches of Lombok Island