Fortune and misfortune.

Due to a recently undergone traumatic experience I am afraid to say that there will be no photos or videos in this blog post. Considering the fact that I also use these photos as a memory prompt when writing, the chance of me recalling much at all of what I have undergone in the last ten days is slim to none. But here goes.

I manage to make my way out of Ubud without getting too lost too many times. I almost constantly seem to encounte junctions in which the road signs all point to places I have never heard of, and I have to guess based on the vague direction I think I am meant to be headed. It seems to work. More or less. Eventually I find myself on the main road that hugs the coast as it moves north and east. Kai is raring to go and I am happy to oblige him.
The road, my side at least, is surprisingly quiet and I find myself at times alone; the sea glittering on one side and the mountains looming on the other. I cross a bridge and a bright sprawling valley unfolds to my left. Swathes of green recess and ride up to great hills in the distance and the sun glares proudly down from the tip of an august jade peak, igniting the tree tops.

I stop to take photos. They should go here.

At last I reach the vague area that I suspect my destination is within. I pull over to look around and no sooner than I do Tanya, my host, wanders out her back gate. She is instantly friendly and talkative. She shows me around her amazing home and introduces me to her beautiful family. She is Dutch, though she grew up in Indonesia, and her husband is from this village. They have three children, a boy and two girls, and a beautiful home. As well as their own house they have five bungalows nestled in amongst a tiny patch of jungle, greeted by the sea at the front.
As if that isn't enough, then come the baby animals. I arrive to find no less than six puppies and two kittens. The puppies, about six weeks old I think, are lively and excitable, and thankfully being largely looked after by their own mother. The kittens are much younger, recently rescued, scrawny, and eyes still unused to all the light in the world. I have barely had time to be introduced to them when Tanya gets a phone call. The goat is giving birth.
We jump on our scooters and head over to their land on the other side of the village. When we get there the babies must only be about five minutes old. The mother is lying on her side, exhausted and panting. The babies are sprawled beside her, covered in gunk and shivering, still attached to their placentas. Their eyes are already open. They are beautiful.
They are wiped down with leaves and left where they are. Within half an hour of their birth they begin their struggle to stand, and one triumphs in the short time I am there. I film his first tentative and stumbling steps. You will never see it. On the way back we pass the newly born calf and a young hen strutting before her vast brood of chicks.

If you ever come to Bali I really would recommend this place, it is called Lumbung Damuh, tell your friends. While most people are guests as in any hotel or hostel I get to stay in one of the bungalows here, and eat with the family, in exchange for help around the land. There are always things needing done in a place like this:gardening, painting, cooking, and recently Tanya has been turning the land next door into a community garden, although it it currently only used by her. In front of the garden, overlooking the beach, three Earth Benches are being built.
Earth Benching is a worldwide movement to spread environmental awareness and encourage eco-living The main structure of the benches here is made of rubbish cleaned from the beach which was then covered with a layer of cob, two were sculpted into the shapes of crashing waves while the third is being made into a pirate ship, complete with mermaid figurehead. They are currently being mosaicked with broken tiles in shades of sand and sea, a process that I will be helping with. And once complete Tanya has plans to install a wheel and rigging on the pirate ship for the children to play on. This whole area between the garden and the beach is being turned into a beach zone where guests, locals, tourists, anyone, can relax during the day or sit around the fire pit at night.
Despite how much there is to do here the atmosphere could not be more relaxed. You work when you feel like working, on whatever you feel like working on. And there always options, wonderful options. For example, on my first evening I am tasked with making an apple pie in their earth oven, and it is a task I eagerly accept. Tanya calls it a Peace Pie so I carve a peace sign into its crust. It is so popular that only two days later I am asked to make another, and some banana bread while I'm at it. Tanya tells me that they often bake and give some to the local shop to sell. It seems like a good idea so I double the recipes and make two pies and two loaves with the full intention of donating them. Somehow it never happens, and we eat them all.

Every day it seems that my work is different, and yet always enjoyable. I build some raised beds in the garden and plant chillies and passion flower. I cut tiles to form the decking of the pirate ship. I bake. I spend days decorating a bench with shining blue tiles and delicate white stones. I pick up rubbish washed in by the tide. I bake some more. I become surrogate father to the puppies and surrogate mother to the kittens.
I eat with the family and I taste delights that I never thought I would experience travelling Indonesia. Roast potatoes, caramelised onions, real yoghurt, real cheese! Fresh bread every day, with real butter. I realise that if I don't watch out, I will spend the rest of my time here.

N.B. I don't think this flows nearly as well without the photo breaks.

A few days into my stay Tanya's husband, Lempot, has to have a cyst removed from his leg. The operation is completely successful but he has to stay in for a couple of days afterwards, and I get to have a look around an Indonesian hospital. Lets just say I hope I don't get ill.
To start with I don't see a single doctor or nurse. And the corridors between wards are all outside, we just walk into his without encountering any sort of reception or entrance hall. There are four beds to a room, and most patients seem to have the vast majority of their family living with them. There is one plug beside each bed in case you want to bring a fan, which you do as there is nothing to quench the oppressive heat pouring in through the open doors and windows. Lempot warns us away from the bathroom. Tanya comments on how quiet it is compared to when she last came. I leave not entirely convinced that the place has any employees.
In the evening the sea and beach are clear and I play with the kids in the warm sea as the sunset paints the sky with lavender and rose. I float upon sparkling blue beneath darkening pastels. I fall into my bed, drifting in and out of sleep with the swell of the tide, the walls of my room seem to fall away and I am lost in an endless sea of rolling waves.

In my time here I have learnt a lot about the Indonesian, or perhaps just the Balinese, people and I have discussed this at great length with Tanya. Firstly I must say that everyone I have encountered is nothing but kind, friendly and helpful towards me. They are open and easy to talk you, they are accommodating and funny. But they are also the most stubbornly fastened to tradition people that I have ever met, and beyond that, apparently, one of the most easily offended (or 'long-toed' as the Dutch say.) Now this is not always a bad thing, of course tradition is important and I am by no means suggesting that anyone should abandon a history of rich tradition. But I think that there are negative consequences to this one of which is that that almost any relationship between an Indonesian and a Westerner, even one raised in Indonesia, requires an exceeding amount of work and sacrifice, and part of that is due to this unwillingness to see things from a different point of view.
For example, when Lempot is in hospital Tanya visits him a couple of times, she brings him some food and books to read but doesn't spend all day every day there, as would be expected here: she has guests to look after, and as I have been through, many other things to do. Lempot doesn't mind of course, but to the family (who also constitute most of the staff as Lumpung Damuh), this means that she doesn't care about her husband, and so the whole lot of them become extremely offended on his behalf. The day I visit him, his dad has been there the entire day, which sounds nice in theory, but they weren't talking, he just sat on the next bed. And that evening all the male members of the family go in to visit, leaving the hostel unmanned, and spend all evening drinking and smoking outside Lempot's room while he reads his book in bed. Why? Because 'that is what you do in Indonesia'. How that shows more affection than visits that involve thoughtful gifts and conversation I don't know.
There are many problems that I think arise from a general unwillingness to change and unwillingness to accept criticism of the populace, and not just in this country by any means. But here one obvious effect is the rubbish situation. It is pretty much the worst I've ever seen. So many people throw all their garbage out on the street or into the rivers from where it washes into the sea until many f the beaches are covered in trash. In defence of the people, I think an important reason behind this is that you need to pay to have your rubbish collected here, and even those who do pay sometimes find it dumped just further down the road. But another reason, revealed upon questioning the offenders themselves, is that they throw it on the street because, again, 'that is what they have always done'. Because they didn't have plastic until the west invented it, so everything they threw away would degrade. As if it is the fault of westerners that they throw plastic in a stream, of even the fault of the plastic itself for not degrading. As if every death from the end of the gun can be blamed on the man who made the first.
Every few days Tanya collects bags of rubbish from the beach, hoping that the villagers will learn by example, and many are, as the consequences of their own actions become more and more apparent. She spent years here trying to explain to others in her village why they should pick up their litter, but that was taken as criticism so it only offended and made people even less likely to do it.
One last, highly amusing, thing about the people here that again arises from tradition: in Bali, not the rest of Indonesia, everyone has one of four names. Honestly. The first child has a set name, the second child has a set name, the third, the fourth, and if you have a fifth then you revert to name one and carry on. How confusing is that? The weird thing is that they are given additional names, I would presume to avoid the obvious problems that arise from everyone having the same name, and yet they don't use them. Many of them don't even seem to know them! (N.B. I have since discovered that there is a different set of names for each of the three castes, but since they don't intermingle that much I don't expect it helps).

The next day I get up early and drive out into the country when it still dark, making my way to Pura Lempuyang, a temple perched on the summit of Mt Lempuyang, and as I drive the sun rises around me. The sky bursts into colour and rice fields shimmer into view along valleys and glades. My road wends its way up steadily steeper hillsides, and I see the grand form of Mt Agung briefly reveal itself. A perfect cone. I drive into the clouds.
At last I reach the end of the road, and the beginning of the sacred trail that works its way up the nearly two thousand steps to the temple at the peak. I am early enough that there is no one else in sight. Not a single tourist, not even a single local. I put on my sarong and start walking.
The path winds through dank forest dripping with cloud, where trees slowly recede into the endless mist; past temples that cling to the steep sides of the mountain, monkeys silently swinging and sprawling over walls encrusted with moss and vine; along narrow trails where it feels as though the mountain must fall straight to the ground on either side, if only you could see it. I am walking along, peering into the eldritch fog that is sweeping out from between the dark wooden sentinels to my right, trying to work out how far into the distance I can see, at what point the mist and trees fade into each other in a pale shroud of grey. Wisps float across the ground and through the air, phantasma drifting where they will, heedless of the living world. And then I glance to my left and it is as though a veil is torn from my eyes, and the sun lights the clouds aflame.
On my right the forest continues as before, but on my left the spectral mists pour from a great ledge, and beyond is a sight, I will unashamedly claim once more, that is like nothing I have seen before. The world drops, nigh on vertical, to a land that is further below that I ever would have guessed. The cliff continues to rise under the path infront of me and its sides are abundant with dripping plants clawing their way out into the abyss. The far ground is just perceptible, it is emerald and platinum and burning white, and it shines and blends with the morning fog that cloaks it and burns it and draws silver rivers and snakes across its surface. In the distance the land rises dramatically, though remains far below my own level, and it seems that the mountain I am on is encased in a great shining ring, whether to keep something out or to keep something in I do not know. Farther even than the ring of hills, everything turns to blazing silver, and the distant sea blends seamlessly with the sky.

I hope that words can capture this scene in a way that my photographs could never have done, for my pictures of this place are perhaps my biggest loss.

I continue up the hill, apprehensive, for what could possibly follow such a display of majesty. I pass more temples, statues and flags, and before too long see a sign that tells me I am at the top. Pura Lehur Lempuyang. It is one of nine directional temples spread throughout Bali, often considered the most important or most sacred of the thousands upon thousands here as they are the ones responsible for the protection of the island and its inhabitants from evil spirits. This particular temple guards the north east. The temple itself is no more impressive than most I have seen, but it is made by its location.
Currently I am in a cloud, so I have a look around, taking in the sounds of the jungle that surround me. I wait for twenty minutes or so and at last there is a slight break. The sea of grey parts and the mighty dome of Mt Agung looms at me from across a vast and cloaked valley. Perhaps it is just that the shape of a volcano is so iconic, and that I know this one still to be active, but it feels as though it contains an unknowable power, wreathed so in its firmamental raiment, that is just waiting to be unleashed. I want to climb it before I leave, should my knees allow.
I catch glimpses of the landscape in the other direction but I know that I will not get a view to rival the one that I have had from that side already, so after taking some atmospheric pictures of Mt Angng I do not hang around. I leave just as the priests and stall owners are arriving. They seem surprised to see me up before them. Slightly unnervingly, a few of them have rifles, I don't ask why.
My way back down is less exciting, the fog is trailing away, leaving the world a more banal place in its wake. As I am approaching the base I suddenly realise that I have left my motorbike key in the ignition. I hurry back and find that my bike has gone. Panicked, I ask the nearest person in religious dress, thinking that they might be the most trustworthy. He smiles and points at the bike park, which I had not known existed as there had been not person nor bike when I arrived, and where they had kindly moved my bike to, as it had been in the way where I left it.
I visit another temple on the way back down, a much more impressive building it must be said, but it fails to inspire me in the way that the walk to Pura Lempuyang did.
From here I head to Tirta Gangga, a water palace built in 1948 nestled in the heart of a wide valley packed from side to side with glittering rice paddies. The palace itself is stunning, a network of squares and pools, each perfect. Statues stand in rows upon glass-still water, and stepping stones wind their way in between them. Fountains burst from crystal ponds and bridges arc over wandering schools of fish. Statues of dogs and dragons, gods and guardians, preside over it all.

In the evenings I mingle with the guests. Tanya and Lempot's living room is outside (but covered) in Balinese style. Guests, family and friends gather here almost every night. We sing and make music, play with the puppies, and drink far too much Arak, the local poison. I meet many interesting and lovely people here, some of whom I hope to meet up with again when I start travelling, and we chat late into the night. Despite what must be sacrificed, I can easily see why people move here for good.

I do not want to leave, but I know that I must if I am ever to see all that I want to see. Besides, my Americans are leaving in two days and I desperately want to meet them for a final night or two. I drive off, promising to return, wanting to just finish my bench, but excited for the next stage of my journey.
After dramatically overshooting my destination I arrive in Kuta, not a place I really planned on visiting, but it is next to the airport and is a good place for a night out before you leave. I drive aimlessly down what I think might be the right street and just as I pull over to have a look at my map I glance to the side and there my friends are. This happens to me far too often. They have already booked me into their room, and I get straight into the pool.
That next two days are fantastic, my Americans are fantastic, we dance in the night and swim in the day. Drinking a beer in a swimming pool with friends, lit by the sun, I wonder if it is possible to feel more content. I don't think that it is.
The second night, their last, we plan on just going for dinner then heading home as they have a flight to catch the next morning. As a result I foolishly take my phone out with me, a thing I would not do if planning on going to bars or clubs. Of course we do not end up just going for dinner, of course we go to bars, and of course my phone gets stolen.
The next morning not only do they have to leave but I have no phone (nor camera, as it was what I used for photos). I am devastated. I spend a day in mourning. I do not truly mind losing the phone itself, and I don't really mind the fact that I now have to buy myself a camera, but I have not uploaded any photos to my computer since the beginning of this blog, and those I cannot replace. Beyond this there were a few songs and idea things that I had written on my phone that I had also never transferred, which seems silly now, but it had never occurred to me to do so. I will not make the same mistake again.

Considering how long I have been away for I think that I am really quite lucky that I haven't had more misfortune. And if I truly want to I can recreate most of the photos I lost without too much bother. I can revisit my mountain climb and I can revisit the water palace; it would only take half a day, and I will be in that part of the country again. And I can take pictures of my bench again when I return to Tanya's, and also of the beaches and of the sunsets I saw from her house. But there is something I can never recapture. By the time I am back the kittens and the puppies will be gone. And they were truly irreplaceable.