Growing up, all I wanted to be was an explorer. The books I read, the movies I watched, they all revolved around that one theme, going to Africa and South America, to Asia and the South Pacific, exploring every last corner of the earth, like Indiana Jones or Charles Darwin, Margaret Mead or Marco Polo.
Well, I grew up with my head in the clouds, and those clouds smelled like adventure.
Like thick jungles and rolling hills, wind in your hair, an endless road ahead, you know, the kind of freedom you can almost taste.
Sure, I grew up, and sure, I know its problematic, this idea of exploration, discovery, especially (I study anthropology how could I not), but it sure is romantic isn’t it?
And even in Bali, a place that seems to breathe tourism at this point, the balinese spirit and the spirit of mass tourism so intrinsically intertwined that it renders any idealistic notion of an untouched (whatever that means) authentic Bali useless except as a means of attracting even more tourists, fueling that very spirit of mass tourism, well, even in a place like that, you can stray far enough from the beaten track sometimes, and dive right into that colorful little bubble of adventure. And don’t we all love living in a bubble sometimes?
So with the help of a few rice paddies and little conversations with friendly locals (in my very broken, entry level at uni Bahasa, in my case) you can trick yourself into thinking that it really is 1891, well, alright, 1951 maybe, and you’re the protagonist of your own road novel.
And sure, usually Bali doesn’t feel like that. But sometimes it does.
So here are a few of those moments.
