Day one continues

Tenganan

A “Bali Aga” village which one of the few original aboriginal villages left in Bali. Their way of life, rituals and customary laws still remain today in among layers of cultural influence from Java’s Hindu-Buddism which began around the 8^th century. The villagers still practice the traditional arts of basketry, ikat weaving and lontor leaf itchings.

I Nyageh Kepet is an 82 year old traditional basket weaver who has been making these beautiful baskets most of his life. He spoke only Balinese so we relied on Astika to translate. Balinese is quite different from Bahasa Indonesian which is the language we have learned and is the official language of Indonesia. There are something like 700+ dialects in Indonesia.

The basket we bought from Nyageh.

Tirtha Gangga

We arrived at this water palace just as the sun was setting. We had to walk through a pond of 108 stepping stones to get to the holy water which is fed by a sacred spring. We had to splash the holy water 12 times in our eyes so we would really be able to see. Pak Astika claims this water comes from the Ganges River in India— wonder how they do that? After a day like this I was ready to believe anything...

Amed

11 hours later, on this amazing day, we finally made it to our hotel in Amed. We had dinner in the garden by the pool where a large orange and white cat meowed at us with his gravely voice and these two ducks quacked at our table. In the morning the ducks were swimming in the infinity pool and I was not!