Day 3 - A beautiful thing here and there

We woke up in the middle of a persistent rain! It wasn't going to stop at all. So what to do? Either adapt to the Ubud lifestyle and just get some rain clocks or be the whole day in our lovely spot waiting for it to finish! We decided to go for the first option. You see the good thing here is that people are always ready to help you they are desperate for work and fulfil any request you may have. 

I asked Made , our host, if he had some rain clocks and he told me to wait 20 mins, after some time his son came back with two of them and we were ready to go ! 

First stop Tegalalag rice terraces , which are located about 20 mins by scooter from Ubud, the drove was really enjoyable, you drive through different villages and you see people waving and greeting you. Is just so unreal how people are nice. As soon as we arrived at the place, a spectacular view was in front of us. 

We start descending down the path and realising how beautifully are designed the terraces and how interesting are the compositions. It was very muggy, but at least rain has stopped. We got lost in all the beauty of the place for a couple of hours and we got back to the reality we jumped on our scooter towards two temples located about 20 mins away.

During the journey through the forest we stumbled into a cozy little restaurant on a side of the street, we decided to go for it and get some food. Another amazing thing: in Bali is that you can get traditional and really good meal in places that you wouldn't dare to enter back in Europe or Western society. We enjoyed a delicious plate of noodles and a great conversation with the restaurateur which at the end of our meal wanted to get a selfie all together. People bring people, by the time we left, there were three more table and people were looking around a bit vicious. I'm pretty sure all of them enjoyed, I giess all of them stopped because they saw other people in the first place. 

After lunch was paid, we drove to the first temple Gunung kawi. Everytime you enter a temple you get a colourful long traditional piece of garment to wrap around your waist in order to cover your legs. I think is such a great thing to do and in sign of respect everyone does wear it. This temple was the very ancient, worth ti mention, the giant carvings in the stone, sign of a previous part of the temple that now is just the main entrance. The place itself is so mystic and full of energies; in the middle of the forest is such a great place to be if there's not too many tourists. 

The second temple we visited was just about 10 mins away, Pura Tirta Empul, which has been the best temple I've seen so far! It is a very touristic place, in fact by the time you exit the temple you are forced to enter a market full of seller that have no decency and grab you by the arm to try to sell anything to you.

The highlight of the temple is a wonderful pool with many fountains in sequence, you can swim  in the sacred waters if you want, I felt a big urge to go in there, but people were praying and I found it wrong for me to go there invading that sacred moment, so I just watched.

It was one of the most incredible thing I've ever witnessed. It was sort of via crucis, where at each fountain you repeat your mantra and then you let the water wash you off, and you could take part even though of a different religion. There was a family blessing their young child, it is so cool how the ceremony was open to everyone without differences. Such a peaceful place.

We get lost through the hall of the temple, bumped in two young Italian tourists and consequently in a group of Indian tourists that insisted on had taken some pictures all together! 

It was a lovely day I think the most powerful since when I've ben here.

We drove back after a few hours to meet up with Alex, our flatmate in Sydney, travelling himself to Bali..

Will keep you posted :-) xx