Bali, Indonesia...Day 2...

The first item on the itinerary was the early morning dolphin trip at 6am. We reached the beach by 5:45 and spoke with the locals who arrange the tour. We headed in a small fishing boat along with 2 others, and the fisherman, the trip started by around 6. After travelling for around 15-20 mins, we started seeing dolphins in their natural habitat. A swarm of dolphins would swoop up, and then go down, exactly like we see in movies. We saw a few of them near our boat and many of them a bit further. It is one experience which no one should ever miss on their Bali trip. The dolphin tour lasted for around 90 minutes. On our way back, we took a photo of “Bali greenery” near the ocean, and a local spotted us, came near us and told “naice..Bali grass…naice…” ;) .

After the dolphin and “Bali grass” experience, we headed back to the hotel, had breakfast and checked out. A long tiring day was in prospect. The next destination was Brahma Vihara Arama, a Buddhist monastery. It was a quiet place, with statues of Buddha, stupas, and small rooms where people meditated. A small but nice place, again very quiet and well maintained.

Following this, we drove to Kubutambahan, and to the Medwi Karung temple there. This temple was famous as it had certain stone carvings which depicted Balinese humor. And here again, we were reminded of the “Balinese grass” joke. And, it was another temple, which depicted the brilliance of Balinese architecture.

The famous "humourous" snap in Medwi Karung temple. :)

Following this, we had a long drive towards Ulun Danu Batur, the second largest temple in Bali. We expected it to be a lake temple, however it was not. It was raining when we reached there, and we had to sit in the car till it subsided. After 15 mins or so, we got out, me in my “lungi sarong”, and Kirti in the sarong from the temple. The wonderful sight of the temple, standing tall, and the rains hitting it, kind of brought memories of my home town and temples over there. We had a guide who accompanied us for the trip, and she was not very keen on showing us around as it was raining a bit. Hence, we had to hurriedly finish the temple, without looking around much or taking snaps. We did not have a really great experience there, as having a guide was of no use, she did nothing other than walking with us, and it was more like an intrusion to our privacy, rather than a well informed guide being with us. There was supposedly a view point from the temple, where we could see the volcanic mount Batur, however, it was quite foggy and we could not see the hill.

Batur temple standing tall. One can see through the fog, the batur hills in the background. A lovely sight!

When we asked the locals, we were informed that Lake Batur was close by and we decided to drive and see the lake before heading to the hotel. On the way to the lake entrance, we saw a small beautiful place which had a magnificent view. We stopped there, it was a field, which gave way to the lake, and from which we could see the volcano. It was quite an amazing sight once again, a lush green cultivated farm, which boasted the likes of red chili, spring onion, lettuce and another veggie which we were not aware of, two kids playing in a small boat in the otherwise calm lake, and the might Mount Batur in the backdrop. We spent around half an hour there, walking around, taking snaps, and comparing the hard work of the farmers with the “effort” we put in, in our work.

The beautiful fields, chilli, spring onion, lettuce and many others...














We got down here in the midst of fog, in Kintamani, to have a hot coffee. :)












This was followed by a tedious long beautiful drive to Amed. We dint follow the conventional route, went through a different one, driving through hills one by one, and it almost took us 4-5 hours, when we reached out next hotel in Amed.
These snaps are in between the long drive.








Finding the hotel in dark was bit tough, but we were well rewarded when we saw our beautiful room in Bali Amed bungalow. We checked in, had dinner from Wawa Wewe restaurant just outside the hotel, and returned back to the hotel and slept sound.