The Balinese Delight

When the powers-that-be at the Dutch KPM Steamship Company added the sleepy and forsaken island of Bali to their itinerary, even the most optimistic among them could hardly have imagined that they were opening the floodgates on what would one day become one of the world's most charismatic tourist destinations. The little island, which in the 1930s lured about a hundred visitors a year doubled its intake within a decade... and surpassed a million yearly arrivals by the 1990s!

The old steamers docked on the north coast and most of their passengers - many of them affluent socialite-vagabonds - would make a beeline southwards to the city of Denpasar.

They would lodge at the elegant new Bali Hotel, or the informal Kuta Beach Hotel owned by a couple of pioneering American surfers who had fallen in love with the stunning beach and its superb waves. Meanwhile other travellers headed for the lush inland valleys of the kingdom of Ubud where they stayed in bungalows that the Raja had built for his circle of artist friends.

These trailblazers would return home - if they could ever drag themselves away - with stories of a place that fitted perfectly with the popular notion of paradise: a tropical island of blissful climate fringed with breathtaking beaches, and paddy fields that were terraced right up to the rainforested flanks of soaring volcanoes.

The natives were genuinely friendly and sweet-natured, worshippers of a singularly peaceful and tolerant religion that was manifested in hundreds of beguiling ceremonies. Flourishing arts - dancing, woodcarving, music, painting - were expressed in countless intense and sophisticated forms.

The primitive rural scenes, the serene daily rhythms, the intriguing ancient rites and the island's exquisite landscapes captivated the European newcomers, reviving long-lost feelings of an all-prevailing harmony and communion with nature.

It is a law of nature that everything transforms...and Bali too has evolved. Very few places of a similar size could resist the onslaught of more than a million visitors a year in such a graceful and seemingly effortless manner.

Even today, what feels like acorns later, the Balinese have proved that they have a surprisingly resilient culture, they have managed to adapt to the 'tourism age' while retaining their deeply rooted traditions and beliefs. While the first tourists might have trouble recognising parts of the island they would surely agree that, in general, its soul remains essentially intact.

The most dramatic transformation - both out and inwardly - is evident in so-called 'downtown Bali'. In the south of the island at a very short drive from Denpasar international airport, is a large suburban sprawl that centres on Kuta and stretches eight kilometres north along that seemingly endless beach, to join the neighbouring villagers of Legian and Seminyak.

Love it or hate it: Kuta is Bali's rowdiest and wickedest spot, a conglomeration of thousands of bars, boutiques, supermarkets, surf-shops, budget hotels, restaurants, moneychangers, beauty salons, nightclubs. During particularly busy seasons throngs of tourists have formed virtually static queues in the narrow back lanes, doing their best to resist the constant demands: "Want T-shirt? Need transport? Want massage? Buy something?"

As you move north, downtrodden gradually becomes more 'uptown' scattered through the lanes of Seminyak are expensive designer shops, hip pubs and signature restaurants. The area is also home to a large expat-community, working in exports or in the hospitality industry, who know that here they can benefit from the beauty of Balinese landscape while still enjoying the advantages of the town.

Bali's timeless soul waits within an hour's drive north of the relatively busy beaches and bustling alleyways of Kuta. As it was when the first steamships arrived, Ubud is still the heart of creative Bali.

The Balinese language has no word for 'artist', painting sculptures, music, or dancing is merely what one does when work is over in the paddies, the fishing boat.. or the hotel. The island is consistently productive yet almost everyone seems to be an artist of one sort or the other.

Since European artist Walter Spies founded the famous Ubud School of Painting, in the 1930s, it has been a powerful magnet for visitors and a source of inspiration for artists around the world.

The creative flow extends to everything from jewellery to temple offerings, from batiks to music. But very possibly Balinese art is most intensely expressed through the dancers that are at the very essence of the island's culture. Few visitors can visit Bali without, at some point, coming across a performance in which dancers, decked in magnificent costumes and somewhat disquieting make-up, act out ancient stories to the hypnotic rhythms of gamelean orchestras.

Despite its hundreds of galleries, craft shops and street artists, Ubud amazingly succeeds in not feeling too commercial and has retained its reputation as a true capital of the arts. No longer the remote cultural outpost that captivated such characters as Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward and the flamboyant Woolworth heires Barbara Hutton, the place nevertheless retains a relaxed and bohemian atmosphere keeps on charming regular like Mick Jagger, Val Kelmer and Chow Yun Fat.

All of them relish the stimulating cultural life yet no one doubts that Bali's magic spell lies primarily in the sheer splendour of nature. In the rolling central valleys you can wonder aimlessly through well-ordered pastoral beauty: rice paddies on one side, a river gorge on the other rickety bridges, moss-covered shrines and temples. Bali's holiest volcanoes, Agung and Batur, are nothing short of awe inspiring and the views from their summit towards the hill of Java have infected many with the splendour of this heavenly island.

Of all the titles Bali has received - Island of the Gods, Land of a Thousand Temples, Last Paradise - maybe Pandit Nehru's is best: The Morning of the World.

In the moments after sunrise, swirling mists wrapping the new-born land below, one senses the sacred status of these peaks and it is difficult not to feel 'enlightened'. At any time, in any unexpected corner, your senses might be tantalised with an impression that will remain in your mind forever as Bali.

The glint of the golden sarong, the clamour of a distant gamelan, the scent of drying cloves, giant kites' flying in a deep blue sky, the exquisite smiles of your hosts, the holy offerings everywhere .... the myriad textures and colors of a paradise where people and gods share temples, beaches, volcanoes and infinitely green paddy fields in divine harmony.

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