This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
The motley crew of concrete buildings lining the narrow streets eventually gives way to terraced emerald rice paddies, and slick cafes are replaced by warungs — simple roadside restaurants selling heaped portions of nasi campur (rice with side dishes) for a fraction of the price of a barista coffee. It’s only an hour’s drive to my starting point for the Astungkara Way hiking trail, but by the time I arrive in the rural village of Tua, about 1,500 feet above sea level, I feel like I’ve travelled back to the Bali of the early 2000s, before mass tourism hit.
Encouraging people to slow down and connect with nature is central to the ethos of the Astungkara Way, an 85-mile hike south to north across the mountainous island, which I’m here to sample. The name translates as an expression of hope in Balinese, which is exactly what the trail’s founders aim to bring to locals along the route, spreading economic opportunities by collaborating with rural communities and low-impact farmers. To complete the whole trail is a challenging 10-day commitment, but it can also be tackled in bite-sized chunks, such as the three-day, 22-mile section I’m walking to get to the central northern highlands of Tamblingan.
Ancient knowledge
It isn’t long before I’m on a gentle meander through a patchwork of rice paddies, plots of chillies and green beans. There’s also red, yellow and white flowers farmed for use in canang sari — the daily offerings placed at temples, family shrines and in the doorways of local businesses by the Hindu-Balinese, who make up 87% of the island’s population. I’m with a small group of hikers — all solo travellers from different countries — and two guides, both Indonesians in their twenties. The only other people we cross paths with are a couple of farmers. It’s the tail end of Bali’s summer wet season, and while the skies are grey, the land is glistening. We pass one man clutching a sickle in one hand and a banana leaf in the other, which he uses as a makeshift umbrella in the intermittent rain as he walks home from the fields.
At the junction of two neon-green rice farms, our main guide Rustaman Abdul Salam — a former English teacher with a broad smile — bids us to pause beside a concrete canal separating the paddies, so that he can explain subak, the island’s traditional irrigation network. “The local banjar, Bali’s smallest form of government, will get together at the beginning of the season to discuss the water management for the entire subak, which might include 200 farmers,” he says. He goes on to explain that the system dates from the ninth century and is now listed by UNESCO as part of Bali’s unique cultural landscape. There are still more than 1,200 of these subaks across Bali, and for centuries this complex community farming practice has ensured an abundant yield for the island’s farmers.
We learn, though, that the ancient system faces modern threats. “The entire subak relies on the same water source, so if one farmer uses pesticides, that will impact all of the farms below it in the subak,” Rustaman says.
Educating travellers about the island’s ecosystems and environmental challenges is an important part of the Astungkara Way’s mission. The trail was quietly launched in 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic by Bali-based Canadian teacher Tim Fijal, who sees the hike as a type of pilgrimage. After decades of pesticide use, Tim tells me over the phone later, Bali’s famously fertile farmlands are beginning to struggle. And so are many of its farmers — a trend that has contributed to the loss of 25% of Bali’s agricultural land over the past 25 years. It is hoped that funds raised from the Astungkara Way can help salvage locals’ livelihoods. The money is used to provide free training and help for farmers interested in switching to regenerative farming, to help future-proof Bali’s agricultural legacy. More than 60 farmers are currently participating.
Family affair
We’ve been walking for less than three miles when we arrive at the traditional Balinese family compound where we’ll be spending the night. It’s a village within a village; behind high walls, the compound is made up of small houses, shrines and communal buildings belonging to multiple generations of the family of Putu Karthika Chandra, our host for the evening. Chickens peck hopefully around our feet as he warmly introduces himself, smartly dressed in a polo shirt, sarong and udeng — a traditional Balinese headdress made from an intricately folded square cloth.
As he shows us around the compound, he delivers a crash course in Hindu-Balinese culture. “Babies cry when they are born, because they are sad about being reincarnated in the human world, rather than among the gods,” Putu says, only half-jokingly, as we approach the sanggah (family temple), where his family’s ancestors are honoured with daily offerings. Karma, he says, shapes Balinese life — in this world and the next. Most Hindu-Balinese bury their dead, then exhume the bodies when the next local mass cremation rolls around — a communal event designed to share the expense of Balinese cremation rituals. In an example of Bali’s evolving traditions, Putu’s family keeps theirs buried under the family temple, and burns an effigy in their honour instead.
We’re given another opportunity to learn about the daily lives of our hosts that evening. We make spicy sambal — an Indonesian condiment with countless variations — by pounding chillis, garlic, spring onions, lemongrass and a few secret ingredients using a giant mortar and pestle in a semi-outdoor kitchen. Freshly fried cassava chips are passed around for us to dip into the sambal, before we sit down on a covered terrace to eat a lavish plant-based Balinese dinner, served family-style by the women of the compound.
After dinner, we’re invited to try recreating a traditional gamelan performance, with a gentle introduction to Bali’s traditional bronze and bamboo instruments. Watching on with amusement is Putu’s uncle, Wayan Sudiantara, who tells me he’s happy to welcome Astungkara Way pilgrims into the five-family compound, and not only for the economic boost. “Our young people leave the village to go to [jobs in] tourism, but this way the tourism comes to us, and we can keep our culture,” he says. The younger generation, Wayan explains, don’t tend to speak or read Balinese very well, because Indonesian and English are now more commonly spoken in Bali outside the home. “More than 20% of young Balinese are working overseas now,” he says, despondently.
A warming shot of homebrewed ginseng arak — a Balinese spirit, made from the fermented sap of palms on the family’s property — sends us off to bed in the makeshift dormitory we’ve set up in a bale (hut) at the rear of the property. It’s raining softly when I crawl into my sleeping sheet, tucking a mosquito net under the edges of my mattress as I go, and I drift off easily to a symphony of croaking frogs.
Heart of Bali
I wake with the rooster’s crow to a delicious breakfast of black rice pudding and strong, black Balinese coffee to prepare me for the day ahead. Setting off through the family’s kitchen garden, we soon enter a Bali I wasn’t sure still existed, where rice paddies tumble down hillsides dotted with bamboo shacks and coconut palms reach for the clouds.
Every so often, we pass a tree trunk cloaked in a sarong. “When a tree is wrapped in a sarong, it means it’s sacred,” explains Widyasaketi Arumningtyas Drajat Palupi, a ball of positive energy who goes by the name of Upi and is here to smooth through the logistics of our hike.
Spiritualism and culture are threaded through the landscape in the Bali I now find myself in. At a crossroads, we peer up at a catur muka (four-headed) statue. On top of a concrete pillar are four otherworldly beings fashioned from brass, each with a different facial expression. Upi explains that these beings — all representations of the Hindu god Brahma — symbolise the four pathways to the spiritual realm in Balinese Hinduism. Like the trees, it too is draped in a black-and-white checked fabric. The practice of wrapping sarongs around people, plants and religious structures reflects a set of rituals that have guided Hindu-Balinese life for centuries. “Tri Hita Karana is the Balinese philosophy of the three causes of happiness, wellbeing and prosperity,” says Rustaman. It’s all about balancing our relationships with each other, nature and the supernatural, he explains.
Surrounded by nature, I feel like I understand this balance as we continue walking for another two miles alongside a subak canal. Our next stop is an ancient-looking water temple — one of several fed by sacred springs — where the Tri Hita Karana philosophy is once again a guiding principle. These temples are commonplace across Bali’s interior, but this one is hard to find and far off the tourist temple trail. We take a steep, unassuming path from the main road, down through a tract of lush jungle where water redirected from a mountain stream flows through a series of moss-covered pipes into a shallow man-made pool decorated with statues of Hindu gods. While the current structure dates from the 1970s, this serene spot has likely been used for religious purposes for much longer, Rustaman tells me.
We’re here to experience melukat — a traditional water purification ceremony. Grey ribbons of incense curl upwards through the thick, humid air as the temple priest crouches to place an offering of flowers, by a stream coursing past the main pool. On stepping into the cool, clear water, we are asked to immerse ourselves in the stream multiple times.
The ritual is repeated in two other auspicious locations within the temple complex, including the main pool, before we are invited to sit cross-legged in front of the priest to receive his blessing. Typically undertaken by Hindu-Balinese up to a few times each year, the melukat ritual is a thoroughly refreshing way to break up our hike. Even without any religious connection, I feel a lightness in my step as we dry ourselves off to continue on our way.
Next-gen farming
That evening, after completing a 7.5-mile hike, we end up at Sandan Natural Farm on the outskirts of another small village. Pineapples peek between sword-like leaves and passion fruit dangle within tempting reach as our host Nyoman Gede Ardika, who goes by the nickname Wahyu, shows us around his small permaculture plot in the foothills of the densely forested Batukaru massif. With his hipster haircut, pierced ears and Breton striped shirt, the 28-year-old cuts an unlikely figure as a farmer — yet his enthusiasm for the profession is clear.
“I was working in cafes in Canggu until the pandemic,” he tells me. “I wasn’t getting enough work, so I came back to my village to help my parents on their farm.” During this time he connected with Djuca Terenzi, a driving force behind Bali’s regenerative agriculture movement, at Jiwa Community Garden in Canggu. “Djuca showed me how to make compost, so you don’t need to buy chemical fertiliser,” explains Wahyu. It inspired him to try his hand at organic farming back at his home.
At first, Wahyu says, his parents thought he was crazy to shun pesticides on the small plot of formerly disused family land he and his wife Ayu transformed into their farm. But they came around as the couple found customers for their produce, and gained a new income stream from Astungkara Way tourists.
In a bamboo nursery, beside trays of bok choy and beetroot seedlings still a few weeks from being planted, we find several bunnies munching hungrily on a pile of freshly picked weeds. It seems like a liability to keep rabbits on a produce farm, but it makes sense when Wahyu shows me the trough beneath their enclosure — it collects the bunnies’ urine to be used as a natural pesticide and biofertiliser. It’s just one of many strategies he and Ayu use on their crops to avoid chemicals.
Seasonally, the young couple grow everything from aromatic lemongrass and crunchy cucumbers to Mediterranean herbs. Ayu serves their current harvest cooked up as hearty jackfruit curry and crunchy cassava fritters with frilly lettuce, and a potato salad topped with coconut and ginger flower sambals. We eat off banana-leaf plates, sitting on the floor of a stilted, open-air bamboo bale on the edge of the farm. It’s a simple meal, but among the tastiest I’ve ever eaten.
The next morning, there’s more veg on the table in the bale where we slept for the night. One of the dishes is something I’ve never encountered before in my decades visiting Bali: grilled sweet potato served with shaved coconut and salt. “Balinese people were eating sweet potato, cassava and other root vegetables long before rice was introduced [over 1,000 years ago],” Upi explains. In the centuries since then, eating root vegetables has come to be associated with poverty. “Not many people want to farm them anymore because of the negative stereotype, but the Astungkara Way encourages farmers to grow crops that continue their culture.”
Into the jungle
With another 12 miles ahead of us, we leave Sandan Natural Farm on a path that takes us into a nearby community bamboo farm before passing through a steep tract of montane rainforest. It’s several hours of challenging hiking that leaves us drenched in sweat, before our route levels out somewhat at the entrance to the Batukaru nature reserve.
Here, we’re joined by strapping park ranger Putu Dedik Setiawan, known as Dedik. With a radio clipped to his backpack, he leads us down a network of unmarked pathways through the lush reserve he patrols regularly for illegal hunters. “They come for luwak,” he says sadly, referring to the native cat-like civet that props up the kopi luwak (civet poo coffee) industry in Bali. It’s been described as cruel by animal welfare organisations because of the way civet cats are typically kept captive on Bali and overfed coffee cherries to make them excrete the core ingredient for the brew.
We hike deeper into the luminous green rainforest, which clings to the slopes of a string of dormant volcanoes. Bird’s-nest ferns sprout from mossy tree trunks, tangles of twisted vines dangle overhead and giant green ferns frame our path. The air is cool, clean and energising. After an hour or so, we pause in a clearing to tuck into a picnic lunch, using our palms to pop open the wild passion fruit Dedik forages for dessert and sucking out their sweet, gelatinous insides before the juice runs down our arms.
The rainforest trail spits us out into a field of blue hydrangeas in the cool, misty highlands of Tamblingan, around 3,500 feet above sea level. It’s an area where waterfalls plunge into moss-covered ravines and farming remains a way of life for most locals. Just 30 minutes more walking and we arrive at the farm that marks the end of our journey. Armed with a freshly prepared dadar gulung — a green pancake made from the pandan plant, stuffed with coconut and palm sugar — it isn’t long before I’m on the long drive back to Canggu. As the rice paddies morph back into concrete and the warungs become cool cafes again, I consider what the Astungkara Way means for the island. It’s undoubtedly a gift for travellers wanting to connect with the real Bali, but perhaps the biggest gift is the benefit it might bring to some of the little seen communities who live here.
Published in the November 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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