Bali, Indonesia...Day 5...

After having breakfast from the hotel, we proceeded towards Batubulan, famous for its stone carvings. We saw many on the way, and stopped near less crowded ones, looked around and saw many great carvings. Then we proceeded towards, Celuk, which was famous for silverware. We entered a huge gallery where there was some great wood work and silverware. However, as they were not so affordable, we decided against buying it and proceeded towards Batuan.





Stone carvings in Batubulan...there were quite a few humongous ones as well...












Wood carvings in one of the art gallery in Celuk.

Batuan is a village famous for paintings; we stopped in a small house of a local artist. We could see them painting and it was so lively and nice. We brought a painting of Buddha, and we were happy that we did not buy it from the galleries, but from the artist directly. We felt really happy when we saw their entire family overjoyed, for us visiting and buying a painting from them. Then we stopped again in a gallery, full of paintings. We proceeded towards Bona, famous for bamboo craft. We stopped in a street which housed bamboo work on one side and wood work on the other, and behind those shops, we could see the artisans working on their creation. After walking around and looking in a few shops, we both were tired, as we were not too much into shopping or bargaining. However, we enjoyed observing their work and were often wondered by the sharp, intricate designs and work they do.

Paintings in Batuan...













Bamboo work...in Bona













Wood work, again...















Glass work, this time...somewhere near Mas or Bona...

We proceeded to Money forest next, as we had time to cover that as well before Tanah Lot. It was a good experience in the monkey forest. Monkeys are considered to be descendants of Hanuman in Bali and they were very sacred there. Some of the monkeys were quite aggressive, especially to people who carried bananas or plastic bags. We could see some mother monkeys cuddling their cute little ones, another big family, with 3 small kids. At some places, the small monkeys would swing around in small branches, studying the process. Then, there was a monkey graveyard, again because monkeys were considered sacred here. Also, I shook hands with a monkey here, which later bit me because it got irritated with me. ;)

We proceeded to Tanah Lot after that. It was a jam packed drive until Ubud ended, and we thought we would not reach Tanah Lot before sunset. Again, we lost our way, however ended up driving across some beautiful valleys and with some “local support”, we reached Tanah Lot by around 4:30 or so. It was super crowded when we reached there. We walked around, saw the temple from outside, climbed another cliff and decided to settle there to watch the sunset. We sat there for an hour or so, staring at the sea hitting the cliffs and a temple standing tall facing the Andaman Sea. It was a silent good 1hr, where I tried to capture Kirti’s silhouette snaps, and we sat there thinking “philosophically” the meaning of life. J Again, at sunset, we could not see the sun as a round ball or so, but we could observe the amazing changes of color that the sky underwent. And it was a great sight, with the sea, the temple and an orange-pink sky on the backdrop.

They say, the sunset is lovely in Tanah Lot. Now, this is the proof. ;)

We drove back to our hotel after having dinner from Tanah Lot, and decided to call the day off.