Hello guys and girls. as always, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read this post and/or look at my photos. In this post I will take you to Bali, and show you my favourite shots that I managed to snap whilst on that small but beautiful island.
I truly feel its important to add a little context to your images, both for yourself and anyone else who is interested in your work. It will help them understand the whys, whats and the hows in making the pictures.
I will say this. My wife and I are definitely not the usual Bali travellers. We definitely did not go for the hippy chilled vibes that are so easily found. We didn't go to sit on the beach and do nothing all day long. Rather, we wanted to go and explore a little deeper into the island that has become so very popular with digital nomads. Now, Bali is undeniably beautiful with its jungles, waterfalls and beaches. But it offers a lot more than that.
For us, travel is all about scenery and culture and how those two things fit together. Bali is a great example of this, if you look past all of the tourist traps! If we had one complaint of Bali, it would be the sheer amount of tourists all in the same places doing the same thing. Waterfalls are a great example.
As I said, we wanted to try and forge our own path, see the things that not many Bali travellers look for. so hopefully this blog post will give an insight into what we saw during our 4 day trip. Lets dive in.
We stayed in the small town of Ubud. It is in the middle of the island not so close to the beaches that Bali is pretty famous for. That suited us as we planned on only spending one day at the beach anyway. The jungles and temples seemed far more appealing to us.
The Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary was our first stop, a short walk from our hotel. An awesome experience, however crazy busy. After having a wander around for a few hours, I found my self attracted to the religion and the temples much more that the monkeys but I obviously snapped a few shots of them.
Once we finished having a look around the monkey forest we headed to an awesome spot, The Hidden Canyon. Such and amazing experience. Unfortunately because we didn't really know what we were heading into, I didn't take my camera with me and at the time, I didn't have any form of action camera. But that place was amazing and I would highly recommend to tour that takes you swimming along the river within the gorge. A moderate fitness level would probably be advised. Its not hard, but definitely not easy.
So that wrapped up day one. Day two had us desperate for some rice terraces and sunrise at Tegalalang Rice Terrace seemed a great first choice. We hired a driver at our hotel who took us to all of the spots we asked. It was extremely affordable, I can't remember exactly but I would recommend a private taxi/driver for the full day adventures!
Once we got over ran by tourists and once the sun had risen high and we lost the best lighting, we asked our driver to show us some waterfalls. We headed to a few of the well known spots such as, Tegenungan Waterfall and Kanto Lamo Waterfall. Gorgeous places but honestly over ran with tourists in the middle of the day. I imagine if you wanted to beat the crowds and go early you would have less people in your way, but our plans didn't allow for that. So I didn't really take many waterfall shots unfortunately, but with a small walk and climb I managed to get the Kanto Lampo shot with no people in the image. Our driver on route, stopped to show us that tallest tree in Bali, (don't know if that was true nor do I know the name, but it was really big) which was really cool.
Then, our final stop on day two was the amazing Tirta Empul. I can honestly say I've never felt so amazed by a single temple, anywhere in world. This place has a very special vibe and the people are almost oblivious to tourists taking pictures which was kind of nice to get a few snaps. A must see in Bali in my opinion!!
Then onto day 3 and unfortunately my wife got a little unwell and had to spend the day at the hotel resting up. I didn't want to explore on my own so I just had a walk around the town of Ubud. Bali is full of gorgeous colours and beautiful buildings and its almost as though you could point your camera any direction and bag a few cool shots.
So day 4 arrived and it was our last day in Bali. We missed out on our beach day, but decided to stick to our plan and see some more temples and rice terraces higher in the mountains. So we headed to Taman Ayun Temple. Follow the link to find more information. Its a pretty cool place. Again a little busy for my liking which meant I couldn't get any really nice photos, but here are a few.
After the first temple, we headed to a much larger rice terrace. This was my second favourite part of the whole Bali trip. This place in my opinion was what travel is all about. Local food, people doing their daily work and stunning scenery!!! Absolutely amazing! Take a look.
So how could we top that? Well, Ulun Danu Bratan, thats how. Now one small caveat, I expected it to be a lot bigger than it is, but once we got over how small the temple was, we remembered what we were looking at. An amazingly beautiful Hindu temple, in the middle of a lake over 1000 meters above sea level. If that wasn't enough, the backdrop is a series of mountain peaks and rainforest. Yes I know, insane! Here are some shots.
Then to finish a pretty awesome last day, we got a glimpse of the picture perfect Mount Agung! We didn't stop and I managed to take these snaps from the car window. In hindsight, I wish we had stopped or even asked to find a better spot to take some pictures! What an amazing sight!
So that wraps up our Bali adventure! A pretty awesome place to visit which has so much to offer. Look past the tourist traps and enjoy some amazing scenery and culture. Would I go back to Bali? No, but purely because I want to see the other Indonesian islands. Java and Lombok are very appealing as well as Sulawesi and Sumatra! Those places are a little less explored and traveled and that really gets me excited.
Thanks again guys, keep those eyes open for my next post!