The seventies Hippy Trail 1

6-3-1974
Kuta, Bali, Indonesia.

Hi there folks.
I have been here almost a week now and I am getting used to the life around here. It is a really beautiful place and all the people are so friendly and smile and laugh all the time. We have had a couple of good surfs here and the water is really warm. I saw some turtles swimming around in the surf yesterday. Today I traded a sarong for a snorkel and goggles and I might go swimming over the reefs. They are really nice and the water is clear and warm.

I have not been sick yet so I hope that I will not be. The food here is not too bad but a miss a good T-bone. Well that is about it.
See yas later,
Steve

My Buddy Nyoman and the losmen where we stayed.

Bali Resources

Next journey - still in bali

For centuries and from the days of the early traders to the cruise ship and the jet traveller of today Bali has been the enchanted island. Much of its charm lies with the people - the graceful, beautiful Balinese who live in mystical harmony with their natural surroundings. Thousands of temples - set in villages amid fields, on beaches, under banyan trees, in caves, on hilltops - are the settings for colourful religious festivals and holy days that help to maintain that harmony.

Another part of the enchantment of bali is the island itself. Bali is a richly foliaged countryside, edged by palm-fringed beaches, dotted with villages, and sliced down the middle by a chain of sacred volcanic mountains whose slopes are seamed by muddy rivers and terraced with rice fields. Separated from the eastern tip of Java by a narrow two mile channel, Bali is a rather small island, shaped like an elongated diamond, stretching about ninety miles eastward. It is fifty miles at its widest point. Though predominantly mountainous, it is one of the richest agricultural islands in the world.

Two major elements in Balinese life are readily apparent to the visitor - rice and religion. Rice, the mainstay of the economy is cultivated in an ingenious complex of terraced sawahs or rice fields which climb the hills and carpet the slopes and plains. The lands are cultivated communally by families that cluster together in villages, each surrounded by walls enclosing temples, the village meeting house, and a series of ancestral family compounds. Dominating the life of the Balinese is their religion , continually manifested in temple festivals, processions to the sea, purification rites, and cremations - all of which the visitor may watch. The chain of volcanic mountains traversing the island from east to west is considered the home of the gods and the holy source of water. Of the conelike peaks, ten thousand foot Mount agung is the highes and the most sacred. Rice and religion play an important role in many of the Balinese dances and festivals, and certainly no traveller should leave Bali without seeing some of these events.

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