Bali. An island of contradictions and contrasts. Modern technology and ancient crafts. Modern tourism and ancient rice fields. Modern shopping malls and ancient temples. Spicy food and soft smiles. Up in Ubud for the Writers & Readers Festival, I have found the perfect haven on this volcanic island, to escape – just occasionally – from the Madding Crowd.
It is early morning and still dark. I am sitting on our veranda with a cup of tea when a tiny, palm-sized tree frog appears, jumping tentatively along the balcony rail, all her daylight vibrancy muted by the shadows of early dawn. Hearing my voice, she raises her head cautiously towards the sound, pauses, then leaps – a spectacular leap – up onto a thin rope two feet above her head. From there, she jumps sideways onto the pillar, her legs splayed, suction-pad toes glued to the brick. I glance away towards the sunrise… and she is gone…
Somewhere behind the veil of cloud cover on the horizon, the golden sun emerges, and it is as if Helios has flicked a switch, as the shadowy landscape suddenly brightens…
…and I am facing a lush landscape of vibrant, intense colour, mostly tropical green, so at odds with my homeland of sparse, khaki eucalypts and sandy soil that repels the rain. Here roots do not need to burrow deep for a subterranean water source. The bushes amass in a thick hedge of huge, shiny leaves, dense and luxurious. The air is soft and damp like a warm hug, not remotely resembling the sharp, dry bite of a north wind blowing off a red desert, leaving grit in your eyes, a harsh red burn on your skin…
Here, many miles north, small birds swoop and dive over the rice paddy playing hide and seek among the feathery panicles, small kids in a viridescent playground. One pair settles quietly on a cable across the field, still as statues, almost touching…
An irregular white dish of frangipani flowers, white petals tinged with pink and yellow, leak a light scent of summer into the air, teasing my nostrils, welcoming me to a breakfast table set with fat omelettes, fried rice, inky porridge and strong, grainy coffee…
A long and winding road through jungle as familiar as Mowgli’s, full of sacred Banyan trees whose aerial roots hang like loose threads to the forest floor, and worn, overgrown Hindu temples. Up and up to rice terraces that climb in tidy fashion out of the gorge, each bank packed neatly with rice plants like a well-made broom with its individual clusters of brush while the upper slopes are thickly thatched in jungle. Single, lanky coconut palms sway precariously in the mild breeze and the noisy burr of cicadas radiates discordantly through the quiet stillness of the early afternoon…
It is late afternoon, and the heat builds like a wall and sucks up my energy. The smoky aroma of a Korean barbecue wrestles with the cloying fumes of car exhausts, leaving an invisible imprint on my clothes fresh from the laundry…
…and I am floating in bloodwarm water beneath the lacy filaments of a giant tree fern and watching gloomy grey clouds chase away a sanguine blue sky as frangipani flowers drip into the pool leaving barely a ripple on the surface as the sound of a gamelan, like wooden wind chimes, drifts over the wall – no melody, but a gentle waterfall of sound trickling into my ears and blotting out…
… the noise of the scooters and trucks hurtling furiously along the main road where footpaths, unfit for unwary feet, threaten weak ankles with up-turned bricks, miniature earthquake chasms, cracked and crumbling concrete, thick tree roots escaping the earth. Torn and tatty rubbish bags beflower the bushes, and thick electricity cables loop and tangle overhead like long strands of skipping rope…
…and the sun sinks behind the trees, and the heat fades with the light.