You smell it before you see it. Somewhere past the bend in the road, a sweet, heavy scent drifts over the warm asphalt. It’s part custard and part onion, with something like ripe cheese underneath. Then you round the corner and there’s the stall: a wooden bench under a bamboo awning, piled with green-brown spiky…
The mist on the lake moves before you do. It lifts off the water in slow sheets, and for a moment the tall, tiered shrine at the shoreline seems to float on nothing at all, its black thatched roofs stacked eleven high against a wall of green mountain. The air smells of wet grass and…
Two weeks ago the village was busy getting ready for the full moon. Pressed white blouses hung on the washing lines and the offerings grew taller. Tonight is the other side of the month. The moon goes dark, and Ubud goes quiet with it. The Balinese call it Tilem, the new moon. This month it…
The glass is small, the color of late afternoon, and it smells like the inside of a spice market: earthy turmeric, sharp ginger, a sour edge of tamarind. The first sip is bitter and bright. The second is easier. By the third you understand why people across Indonesia start their day this way. This is…
Listen for it in the late afternoon, when the heat lets go of the lane: a soft whip of rope, a thud on packed earth, then a low wooden hum that goes on and on. Somebody has thrown a top. Walk to the gate and you will find a small knot of neighborhood kids crouched…
Before dawn, Ubud is still dark and the roosters have only just begun. Forty minutes later you are standing on black volcanic sand, board under your arm, watching the first light catch the spray off a reef. Behind you, Mount Agung is a blue shadow above the mist. That is Bali surfing from an Ubud…
Step out of the gate for a morning walk and, sooner or later, a dog will decide to come with you. Not your dog. Not anyone’s dog, exactly, and at the same time everybody’s. A lean tan dog with pointed ears and a tail curled up over its back like a question mark. It falls…
The Bali starling nearly vanished. Here is where you can see Bali’s rarest bird today, including release villages near Ubud, Nusa Penida and West Bali.
Walk down the lane a little after seven and you will pass them before you understand what they are. Three or four bells of woven bamboo, set out on the grass at the edge of the road, each one about knee-high. Inside each bell, a rooster. Copper and black and bottle-green, standing very straight, watching…
Mount Agung from Ubud: why Bali’s sacred volcano matters, the best viewpoints, Besakih, Agung vs Batur, and the current climbing closure to 18 Nov 2026.
