Bali seems to be currently the go-to destination for many people all over the world and we too decided to join the bandwagon and explore the place. 🙂 With beautiful scenery of every kind and abundance of rustic cultural landscapes, Bali did live up to all the hype. 

From the moment we landed till we flew back, we saw that Bali was generally clean overall. Only downside was the high prevalence of smoking everywhere (even within temples! & even in the presence of children). 

Roads predominantly had only two lanes – one for either way. So there was traffic most of the time, since it was like a procession of vehicles in a single file. But the good thing was, there was discipline despite the slowing down caused by traffic – no overtaking and no honking of horns at all. In fact, traffic or not, we hardly heard the sound of horns, despite there being too many two-wheelers too on the road. Barring a few mini buses in Ubud, we hardly saw any form of public transport anywhere. Everyone seemed to have their own two-wheeler or car. 

The terrain was generally not plain, so a lot of the commute was having slopes and sometimes hilly regions too. 

The buildings here, be it shops or hotels or houses, were predominantly of only one or two storeys. We didn’t spot any building beyond 4 storeys at most. I wonder if this could be to facilitate easy evacuation during any volcanic eruptions. 

Places around all the tourist attractions had a lot of restaurants or food stalls (called warung in Indonesian language). A lot of these places had boards clearly mentioning that vegetarian options are available. Indian food too was advertised to be part of the menu in many places.  

There were temples literally everywhere, especially in areas in and around Ubud and other countryside regions. The temples were all clean and well-maintained too. 

Statues of Hindu Gods like Arjuna, Gatotkacha, some Dwarapalakas (guardians) or some divine figures similar to Dwarapalakas were found in many junctions of roads.

A lot of shops and other commercial establishments seemed to have idols of Lord Ganesha. 

A lot of roads were named after Hindu Gods and characters of Mahabharata and Ramayana. The characters ‘Jln’ which precede the name of a road is a short form for the Malay/Indonesian word ‘Jalan’ which means ‘Street’/’Road’. One could spot everything from Jln Hanoman to Jln Eka Laweya to Jln Kunti.

Paddy fields, coconut groves and banana plantations were ubiquitous all through the island.

This, more than anything else, kept giving me the feel of travelling through our very own fertile Kaveri delta region. 🙂