Hiking the rim of Batur crater in Kintamani Bali: part VI

Heading back the same way I was dreading every step as my boot was rubbing and a nice blister had developed on my heel. The time was 4.30pm and I figured I'd have not too much daylight left when I got back to the bike. Fortunately heading back seemed to be slightly down hill so I made it faster than expected. The bike was standing in the place I left it all by itself with no locals around. Pulling on my fleece as I could feel a chill coming on I mounted the bike and began the slow, 1st gear crawl back up to the main road though pot-holed lanes.

One last stop for a liter of petrol in the first village I came to and I was again on the main road blazing through crappy Kintamani and down the hill from the town of Batur towards Payangan and Ubud. Incidentally the route from Batur to Payangan is straight as an arrow, all downhill and passes though some very nice scenery. Its also not the main road so is altogether a nice way to get back to Kuta. A thunderstorm kept the skies dark and made the streets and me wet. Thick fog came in and I donned the trusty silver poncho, which acted like a windbreaker so my fleece could actually keep in a couple of extra degrees of heat. Miguel Covarrubias describes his arrival in Bali in 1930 driving from Singaraja, to a cloudy Kintamani, where he sees a few scraggly locals walking in blankets. He writes “It grows colder and colder, and soon the tourist is shivering in a cloud of fog. He begins to suspect that he has been decieved.”

After a rest stop and some hot tea he then takes a route through Bangli to Denpasar. He says “Soon he is on the road again; the car winds and turns sharp curves down the mountain, the fog vanishes, and the air becomes warmer and clearer. Tropical vegetation reappears, and riding among tall palms and enormous banana trees, he enters Bangli, which is at last like the Bali of the photographs. With lessened suspicions, he rides through many beautiful villages and fantastic terraced ricefields covered in every sahde of tender green.”

While I was zooming southwards on a route that was similar, my mind went back to his writing and was imagining him seeing these sights for the first time. Arriving home at 7.30pm my trip from the trailhead to the house was exactly 3 hours, not bad for the other side of the island and I relaxed with a Guinness, amazed to be back in the 21st century.