The Beautiful Bali

Thanks for the warm welcome David!

Simple pleasures - morning chai delivered to your room

"Blissed" here for 10 days!

Yoga at the resort

Hike on the paddy fields

"Ah those days!" You can imagine these kids looking back later.

Balinese Homes have temples like we have garages.

Green School

Green School is a must visit

Took dad's permission before taking this beautiful picture

You are welcome (although you won't be let inside)!

Preparations for the temple ceremony

Sorang and waist band are a must at Bali temples

Agung volcano. Picture taken about an hour after it blew smoke on Dec 25th 2017.

Coffee Farm

No need to say cheese - I am always smiling!

Coffee Farm

Centuries' old sea temple - Tanah Lot

You walk some distance through the Indian Ocean to get to this cave.

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 Simple pleasures!

Delicious tropical fruits

Another Wow moment

"Somebody up is watching you!" - Humayun Kabir

Balinese Artist: Wayan Rana.

Hike from Karsa Spa to Ubud downtown

Themes from Ramayana and Mahabharta are a common sight

Bali's Vishnu has a mustache

Scene from Ramayana enacted at Ulwatu temple

Waiting for their first customers (its already 1 PM)

"Stress..? Anxiety..? Depression..?  What on earth is that?!"

Don't ask me where this was taken!

92 and batting.

(couldn't help recalling a poem from high school that we had to memorize)

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
..
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
..
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

(H W Longfellow)

  

A hundred years ago,  Somerset Maugham  sailed to these islands, stayed for months, befriended locals and wrote famously  about about their lives.  Savoring a story in the very place where it was set.

Dancing Girls of Bali

I conclude with an excerpt from "Code of the Woosters"  by P G Wodehouse:

Jeeves was trying to get me to go on a Round-The-World cruise, and I would have none of it. But in spite of my firm statements to this effect, scarcely a day passed without him bringing me a sheaf or nosegay of those illustrated folders which the Ho-for-the-open-spaces birds send out in the hope of drumming up custom. His whole attitude recalled irresistibly to the mind that of some assiduous hound who will persist in laying a dead rat on the drawing-room carpet, though repeatedly apprised by word and gesture that the market for same is sluggish or even non-existent.

'Jeeves,' I said, 'this nuisance must now cease.'

'Travel is highly educational, sir.'

'I can't do with any more education. I was full up years ago. No, Jeeves, I know what's the matter with you. That old Viking strain of yours has come out again. You yearn for the tang of the salt breezes. You see yourself walking the deck in a yachting cap. Possibly someone has been telling you about the Dancing Girls of Bali. I understand, and I sympathize. But not for me. I refuse to be decanted into any blasted ocean-going liner and lugged off round the world.'

'Very good, sir.'

He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully changed the subject.

How wrong are you Bertie!