Get to know the East of Bali – Climb the highest volcano
Get to know the East of Bali – Climb the highest volcano
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We highly recommend to explore the East of Bali, especially the Sidemen area. Most people skip this area of Bali, however it’s a place where you still can experience a very authentic picture of Bali. While most people stay in the touristic areas like Canggu, Ubud, and Uluwatu, the East and North of Bali give you still a pure and authentic experience. In the East you will often see the biggest volcano Mt. Agung in the background. Do you dare to climb it?
1. Agung Viewpoint – Bukit Cinta
This is the most beautiful viewpoint in East Bali. We stayed at Jasri Bay at the coast and needed a 20 minute scooter ride to get there. We highly recommend to be there at sunrise, then you can experience the most beautiful light with fog over the rice fields and the Agung becoming visible behind the clouds. Search for the restaurant Bali Asli at Bukit Cinta Viewpoint (coordinates: 8.4263649, 115.6068959). At the curve before reaching the restaurant you can park your scooter at the roadside and walk down the rice fields to the place with the two palm trees. For 60 minutes we’ve been there completely alone.
2. Pura Penataran Lempuyang
To get there you have to drive up a steep road to the top of a mountain. Unfortunately this places is really touristic because of its famous gate in front of Mt. Agung. In the morning it’s easier to get a picture. If you come around midday you might get a paper with number 220 and have to wait 2 hours in a line to get a picture.
3. Tupak Cepung Waterfall
You might know this picture from the sun ray pictures on Instagram. It’s located in the East of Bali and easily reachable by scooter. If you come early you might be alone here and don’t have to pay any entrance fees. Unfortunately the sun rays are coming a little later, when most of the tourists arrive. To get to the waterfall, you have to climb over a few bigger muddy rocks.
4. Climbing Volcano Mt. Gunung Agung 3140m
Well, that was a kind of adventure! We never did something like that before. Our lovely mountain guide and good friend Ketut picked us up at our hotel in Ubud at 9 pm. We drove to his house near the volcano Mount Agung. He lives there with his wife and 3 kids in a little one-room tin hut. And as it is often, the poorest people are often the kindest! They invited us to eat with them and smiled and laughed with us! Ketut told us, that his biggest dream for his life is to build a house for his family for 100.000.000 Rupiah (7092$). After we got friends with his lovely family we started our adventure at 12 pm in the night and darkness.
From the food of the volcano, we hiked 2,5 hours through deep jungle in the darkness. Luckily Ketut told us the monkeys would sleep ;). We climbed hour after hour through boulders and rocks. Just when we wanted to give up, he pushed us to go on. At 5:20 am we finally reached the summit with 3140 meters after walking on the ridge for the final meters. The last 5 hours we managed to climb 2140 meters and it was extremely hard.
I, Jana, wept for joy when we reached the summit. We saw so many stars and Ketut carried on enough to eat. The sun rose behind the Lombok volcano and the view was out of this world! We were alone at the summit and felt so connected to nature! We all danced to get warm and sang from happiness. At 7 am we started with the descend. The first time we saw what we climbed up in the darkness. We were thankful that Ketut motivated us all the time and thankful for life!
Ketut was the best mountain guide we could wish for. He had a lot of experience! We had so much fun together and got really good friends! If you want to climb a volcano in Bali, we would be more than happy if you contact Ketut (phone number: +62 852 0372 3242, www.bawamountagungtrekking.com)
5. Besakih – The most beautiful mother temple
With the big volcano Mount Agung in the frame we drove to the mother temple Besakih, the most important temple for the Balinese people. You will be surprised how untouristic and poor this area is. We highly recommend to visit this temple since we were the only tourists in this meaningful temple. We hiked all the stairs up and passed several gates. The colors black, yellow, white and red stand for different meanings.
On public holidays all the locals walk with prepared sacrifices from the Besakih temple up to Mount Agung. There are ceremonies repeated every day, month, year and century. We were able to join a prayer. We had to clean our hands with incense sticks, had to put a flower behind our left and right ear and some corn on our head, then we got water on our hair and rice on our forehead.
6. Explore the Black Sand Beaches on the East Coast – Go diving in Amed
We wanted to get an impression of how the beaches at the East Coast look like. The lava beaches are simply black :). At the southern beaches on the East coast you can even see the Nusa Islands, the waves here are really high. Amed is located more North, almost at the most Eastern point of Bali. Amed is famous for its intact coral reefs and its perfect diving spots. Life here is very calm, slow and not that touristic.
7. Padang Bai
Padang Bai is a popular spot to take the fast boats to the Gili Islands or to the Nusa Islands. But we heard it’s also a nice snorkel area. Only the harbor is very crowded! The bays next to the harbor are remote and beautiful!
- Read here Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan in 2 days with a scooter
- Read here What to do on Nusa Penida in 2 days?
- Read here Explore the Gili Islands with us – Lombok adventure
8. Stay at Jasri Bay Hideaway
We highly recommend to explore the East of Bali! There are so many beautiful remote places to visit and it was the perfect starting point for the Mount Agung viewpoint and the Pura Lempuyang temple. The huge villas are absolutely special – we never experienced something like that before. Sitting on the veranda it feels like you are living directly on the ocean. We could watch the huge waves breaking just 30 meters from our room for hours! It’s really meditative! And the infinity pool really deserves it’s name.
9. Stay at Camaya Bali
Our obsession for Bamboo-Architecture led us to another amazing place. This is the brand new Butterfly Villa at Camaya Bali. All the villas are so beautiful! The Butterfly Villa has it all, nets, jacuzzi, cinema on the first floor. Enjoying the sunrise and sunset over the rice fields from an open living room area with a jacuzzi felt like a dream. There are two seperate bedrooms, so you can share the prize. From Ubud you will need a little more than 1 hour to get there.
10. Stay at Hideout Bali
Have we already told you that we are absolutely obsessed with cute bamboo villas? Well, Hideout Bali has 5 of them. Each villa is totally unique but the moment you step in you feel at home in every single one of them. We had the chance to stay in one, but explore three, Hideout Lightroom, Falcon and Horizon. We hope we can come back soon to also see Beehive and Hideout Bali. Yes we are obsessed with these villas! 😉
Each villa has a free scooter, a beautiful outdoor area, a lot of musical instruments and the owners will prepare you really good breakfast and dinner!
*Anzeige/ad This article contains recommendations of hotels and restaurants. We collaborated with some of the hotels. However, this article represents our own and honest opinion.
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