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| The coast east of Lipah is very pretty indeed! |
The first day was the hardest ride of the entire trip, with some 2660 vertical metres of climbing in some pretty intense heat. I started off by riding the RollerCoastal, the back road to Amlapura, the biggest town in Karangasem Regency (in which Lipah is located). I often ride part of this road as a fun morning outing, but I had never cycled all the way to Amlapura. My nickname for the route tells you what you need to know about it: lots of short, steep ups and downs. The road climbs up and down over a series of sharp ridges coming down from the caldera of the extinct volcano that rises just behind Lipah. Lempuyang and Seraya are the two highest surviving bits of a mountain that blasted itself to pieces sometime in the dim prehistoric past, but looking on a map you can see that there is a clear outline of what was once a much broader, higher volcanic cone. It was a hot, challenging ride, with lots of it ridden in my lowest gear. About two thirds of the way to Amlapura, the road finally became gentler, with better pavement and kinder grades. It felt amazing to be back in the saddle, headed out for more than a couple of hours of riding. I had missed the sensation of freedom and exploration that a bicycle tour always brings me. The views along the RollerCoastal are sensational, with every headland bringing another vista of a black sand beach crowded with fishing boats, with the shimmering azure of the Bali Sea studded with sails beyond. This stretch of coast has escaped tourist development, and the villages are devoted to fishing as they have been for generations.
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| Gunung Agung seen from Amlapura |
After two and a half hours of tough riding, I got to the big city and had lunch in KFC so that I could use their free wi-fi; my SIM card had been locked by the government, and I was hoping to get it unlocked at the Telkomsel office in town, but I had forgotten that it was Sunday, and the office was closed. I sat in the air conditioned restaurant, loaded up a Google Map route onto my phone and then set off northwest into the highlands under the fierce midday sun.
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| Lovely rice terraces on the way to Besakih |
I had a wonderful view of Gunung Agung as I rode out of Amlapura. The volcano has returned to its usual peaceful state after a few months of intense rumbling, shaking and puffing from September to January, and it looked magnificent in an almost cloudless sky. I rode along the main road for a while until Google Maps directed me off onto a side road. I am usually a huge fan of side roads, but in this case the side road was a tiny bit shorter by being a lot steeper, with a series of steep ups and downs through the spectacular rice terraces for which Bali is famous. It was gruelling work, and when I finally re-emerged onto the busy main road, it was actually a bit of a relief to have gentler grades, despite the incessant noise of motorcycles and trucks and the standard Balinese maniacal driving style. The road led around the western slopes of Gunung Agung, past the turnoff to Besakih, the main temple of the mountain and the starting point for climbing Agung. I was definitely feeling all that vertical climbing when I finally reached the rim of the Gunung Batur caldera. It was disappointing to discover that this was not the end of the uphill, as the road undulated, more up than down, for the next several kilometres until I got to the junction at Peneloka. There a road plunges down to the shores of the lake, Danau Batur. I was less than keen to lose all that hard-earned elevation, so I took a room at a hotel perched on the caldera rim, hoping for a fabulous sunrise view the next morning; it was already dusk by the time I climbed off my bicycle, legs weary but otherwise feeling pretty good. A much-needed shower, a big meal and an early night completed the first day.
Day 2: April 9. Peneloka-Candikuning 65 km, 1510 vertical metres
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| Dawn over Batur |
I was up in the predawn the next morning after the soul-satisfying deep sleep that comes after a big day of riding. There was a pretty dawn light show in the eastern sky, but thin cloud led to rather flat, disappointing light on the new cinder cone of Gunung Batur. I could see the headlights and camera flashes of hordes of trekkers near the summit; Batur is a popular climb for tourists, and has been sewn up by a local guiding association who make it remarkably expensive for a relatively short walk. I felt no real need to climb the volcano, as there was plenty of exercise ahead, despite it being a significantly shorter and less vertical leg than the day before. I took a few photos, stretched and juggled a bit to wake up, then climbed onto my bicycle.
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Early morning light on Gunung Batur
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| Festival time |
The road continued to climb, albeit fitfully, as I circled the caldera clockwise. There was a lot of traffic on the road, as this is part of the main north-south route from Denpasar to Singaraja. Luckily there was a festival at one of the temples along the route which closed the road to all but motorcycles and one lucky cyclists. After 11 kilometres and some 350 metres of ascent, to just over 1600 metres above sea level, I was happy to turn away from the main road and start descending to the south. I could see the mountains enclosing the day's destination, another volcanic lake called Danau Bratan, to the west, seemingly close enough to touch, but the jagged gash of a deep gorge means that there is no direct road between the two lakes. Instead my route led me 25 km south to a crossing point, then another 25 km north again. The southward leg was all downhill, making for an easy morning. The scenery was appealing too, across volcanic highlands devoted to plantations of oranges, coffee and marigolds. I had not breakfasted before leaving, so in the small village of Catur I stopped for a big helping of gado gado, one of my favourite Indonesian dishes, at a small roadside stall. The woman running the place spoke exceptionally good English, and it turned out that she had worked abroad for over a decade in Turkey, the Maldives and Dubai. She worked first as a masseuse, then as a massage instructor and supervisor, and had only returned to her native village to care for her aged parents a few months previously. We chatted about travel, and it turned out that she, like me, is a big fan of Kyrgyzstan. These sorts of serendipitous encounters with people along the way are one of my favourite aspects of bicycle journeys, and I pedalled off with my belly full and feeling good about being back cycle touring.
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| A well-travelled restaurateur in Catur |
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| Volcanoes lining up from near Plaga |
I lost altitude increasingly rapidly, eventually crossing one deep canyon and climbing into the small town of Plaga before dropping again to the main crossing over the Ayung River. I was now less than 30 km north of Ubud and the landscape, all rice terraces and pretty ridge-top temples and villages, was very similar to the magical countryside that made Ubud famous (too famous, to judge by the appalling traffic that was choking the place the last time I visited, last September). Now all that remained was 900 metres of regaining lost elevation. It was a steep, hard grunt, but much of the way I was on a small side road without any traffic at all, so I had time to look around and appreciate my surroundings. It was a bit grey and hazy, not so good for views but a welcome relief for a cyclist sweating his way uphill. About 6 km short of my destination, I joined another major north-south road and resigned myself to more heavy traffic and obnoxious driving behaviour. I finally got to the village of Candikuning around 1:30, found a cheap hotel, showered and then set off in search of sustenance, both physical and intellectual.
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Highland plantations
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| Marigolds grown in the highlands |
The former came in the form of mujair, the fish that is raised in fish farms in both Danau Bratan and Danau Batur; it was pleasant, but the sweet soy-based sauce was a bit strange. I then wandered up the road to the Bali Botanical Gardens where I hoped to do some birdwatching. I had read several accounts of birdwatchers who had seen a couple dozen species of highland birds in an afternoon there, but I was either incompetent or unlucky, or both. I could hear birds calling high overhead in tall trees, but peer as I might through my binoculars, I couldn't spot anything. It was a complete strikeout in terms of new species; at least I had a pleasant stroll through the gardens. After a big dinner of nasi goreng, I was in bed early, feeling a bit tired.
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Near Danau Bratan
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Day 3: April 10, Candikuning to Lovina 33 km 330 vertical metres
It was a good thing that I was in bed early, as I had not paid enough attention to the religious makeup of Candikuning. Bali is mostly Hindu, but there are pockets of Muslims here and there, and Candikuning was almost exclusively Muslim. I was sleeping with my earplugs in (Bali's obsession with roosters, along with its packs of feral dogs, make for noisy nights), but they were no match for the high-decibel call to prayer that shook my hotel at 4:30 am. I eventually fell asleep again, but I was not a well-rested little cyclist when I crawled out of bed.
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| Overlooking Danau Buyan |
The day's riding was amazingly short and easy. I rode out of town along the shore of Lake Bratan, then along a level valley leading to two more lakes, Buyan and Tamblingan; all three are nestled under the caldera wall of another extinct volcano. At Buyan the road climbed steeply up to the rim of the caldera and then continued fairly level, with expansive views of the lakes to the left and the ocean to the right. I felt suspended in mid-air and it made for wonderful cycling, especially when the main torrent of traffic disappeared downhill towards Singaraja. Not long afterwards I followed Google Maps down a very steep route to the tourist hotspot of Lovina Beach. I had 1500 metres to lose over 15 km, an average gradient of 10%, but the first half was surprisingly level. The second half, however, was precipitous, and my forearms were starting to cramp by the time I got to the bottom. It was very pretty and there was next to no traffic, and I really enjoyed being so far off the beaten track. At the bottom I was able to boil water from my bottles on my brake rotors; all that gravitational potential energy that I had gained the day before was converted into heat, a fact that pleased my physics-teaching brain.
I had stayed in Lovina one night back in November during a quick diving trip along the north coast, and I had been surprised at how tatty the village is. I knew that lots of expats and retirees live in Lovina, and I was hard-put to figure out where. This trip revealed another side of Lovina in the hills above the coast, where genteel villas have been constructed to catch the mountain breezes. I stayed closer to the coast, in the cheapest hotel so far; 150,000 rupiah (about US$ 12) bought me a spacious room in a complex with a swimming pool and pleasant gardens. I went out for a sizeable lunch, then ended up spending much of the afternoon catching up on my beauty sleep, undisturbed by any muezzins. I went out for dinner that evening overlooking Lovina's rather underwhelming beach and listened to quite a good cover band before retiring to my room.
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Danau Buyan
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Day Four: April 11, Lovina to Lipah 90 km, 740 vertical metres
The last day of the trip was a bit of an anticlimax. After the mountains, climbs, descents and new scenery of the first three days, the final stage was a fairly flat, uneventful trundle along a road that I had travelled twice before in each direction on visa runs (Singaraja is the nearest visa extension office to Lipah). I stopped in Singaraja and got my SIM card issue resolved, a process that took almost an hour as I was behind a line of Chinese visitors who had also been stymied by the government's obsession with having all SIM cards registered. After Singaraja I was able to ride fast enough to generate some wind cooling in the heat of the day, and I made good time all the way to Tulamben, site of the USAT Liberty wreck and many more less well-known muck-diving sites that Terri and I have visited many times. From there the road got a bit hillier, but I was still back in Lipah by 2:30, having taken less than four hours from Singaraja. I was hungry and a bit sunburnt, but elated at having seen a few more corners of Bali by bicycle. I can't wait to do more cycle touring (probably just weekend jaunts) when I move to Tbilisi in August!
