Bali is the land of 10,000 Hindu temples. Try as you may, you won’t be able to see them all. The following information will help you start your research, prioritize your destinations and plan accordingly.

Most of Bali’s temples are simple, elegant and beautiful. Most are hundreds of years old. Some sit on the edge of the sea, while others are near streams, lakes and other peaceful places. The architecture, craftsmanship and cultural display are magnificent and memorable.

There are several different types of temples across Bali. Most families have a private temple. Most neighborhoods have a private temple.

All villages on Bali have at least one temple for the entire community.

The temples may or may not be open to the public. The larger temples, such as Besakih, are usually open to everyone.

Throughout Indonesia, temples are referred to as pura or candi. Pura is Sanskrit for “space surrounded by a wall.” Therefore, the word pura usually refers to larger temples with inner ceremonial areas. Candi often refers to smaller temples and sometimes refers to the split gate that leads into the Balinese temples (these split gates that guard the entrances to temples are called candi bentar).

Pura Tanah Lot: This charming temple overlooks the Indian Ocean. It is Bali’s top seaside temple (of seven) as it sits on a massive natural coral foundation just a few meters off the beach. At high tide, it is completely surrounded by water. Tanah Lot is best seen in the late afternoon and at sunset. In fact, the Balinese perform enchanting ceremonies on the beach at sunset. As with the other top tourist destinations on the island, it can be packed with people. To avoid the crowds, visit in the morning.

Pura Besakih: This is the largest and most sacred temple on Bali. It was built in the 2^nd Century by the Hindu priest Markandia. It features three main complexes dedicated to the Hindu Trinity. Each complex features large meru (pagoda-style, roof-like structures) to honor the souls of kings and other elite ancestors.

Pura Uluwatu: This is Bali’s second-best seaside temple. It sits high on a cliff and overlooks the rugged surf about 300 meters below. Most sights around Bali are more picturesque when viewed at sunrise or sundown. Uluwatu is no exception. The cliff faces the southwest, which is a spectacular place to watch the sunset over the Indian Ocean. Visitors can buy food for the monkeys that inhabit the temple.

Danau Beratan: Also known as Pura Bratan, Danu Beratan and other combinations of those words, this charming temple sits on the edge of Lake Beratan, high in central Bali. When the lake is full, the temple is surrounded by water. This is one of two lakes located in the caldera of this giant and extinct volcano. The Temple to the Lake Goddess sits on the edge of the lake and makes a dramatic site. Clouds lingering inside the extinct volcano add to the mystical backdrop behind this beautiful temple.

Taman Ayun: This is one of the oldest major temples in Bali and dates back to the Mengwi Dynasty of the 16^th Century. The name means pretty garden. The temple features many black thatched-roof pagodas to honor the volcano gods of Mt. Agung and Mt. Batur. The brick building in between is the Paibon to honor the ancestor of the king. The temple is framed by a large moat.

Pura Kehen: This is the temple built by the former king of Bangli, which was one of the nine kingdoms of Bali. Various feasts and ceremonies are held here throughout the year. This small, but proud temple is about an hour from Ubud. 

Pura Taman Saraswati: This temple is located in Ubud, which explains why it often is called the Ubud Water Palace. The temple features a famous lotus garden and several mythological Hindu figures. The inner temple is still an active worship site and restricted to visitors.

Pura Gunung Kawi: This is one of Bali’s oldest, largest, and most charming ancient monuments. It sits near river at the bottom of a small valley and consists of 10 large relief cuts chiseled in the rocky walls of the valley floor. Not much is known about this temple, but locals suspect that it was a tribute to 11th Century Balinese royalty. It requires a hike down steep, stone stairs to get there.

Pura Tirta Empul: This temple dates back to 962 A.D. According to the Balinese, the sacred pool of spring water is Tirta Amerta (the holy water of immortality). This water drains to the bathing pool and fountains outside the temple. Former president Soekarno’s palace overlooks the springs. He designed the simple structure himself and had it built in 1954.

Kuta Beach Memorial: Kuta Beach is the area where terrorists bombed a nightclub in October 2002 and then bombed a restaurant in October 2005. The Balinese built an outdoor memorial across the street from the 2002 site, which lists the names of the victims.

Visitors must wear sashes and sarongs to visit most temples. Small donations are required to enter many of them.

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The Balinese culture embraces the arts like no other culture in the world. Arts and crafts are instilled at a young age and are an integral part of the island’s fascinating culture. Ubud is the center of the arts and a magnet for those who appreciate Bali’s delightful arts and crafts. Batik, paintings, carvings, music and dance are all found in this hub of culture and crafts.

Ubud is a magical and spiritual place where traditional Balinese culture permeates every breath and every step. Colorful offerings to the gods line the streets and hypnotic chords of gamelan provide an enchanting soundtrack along the way.

As much of Bali has become overdeveloped and commercialized, Ubud is still a showcase of harmony, simplicity and elegance.

The Ubud Art Market (Pasar Ubud) is a good place to find your silk items, including scarves, shirts and sarongs. It’s also a place to shop for wooden statues, masks, kites, handmade woven bags, baskets, paintings and more. The market is open daily.

The famous market served was featured in the movie Eat. Pray. Love. It’s one of the most popular destinations on Bali. It’s a fascinating destination perched at a much higher elevation than the beachside communities below. It can be a welcome relief from the heat and humidity of Kuta, Nusa Dua and Sanur. If you seek even cooler temperatures, just keep climbing even higher and pack a jacket or sweater.

The Ubud Market offers exceptional Balinese arts and crafts. It also features the arts from other islands and even other exotic destinations around the world. Unlike the shops lining the Monkey Forest Road, most items on display at the Ubud Art Market have no set price. Haggling is expected as part of the fun of shopping, but do so politely. Shop around to get an idea of typical prices before you commit to making your first purchase. The market is open daily from 8 am to 5pm. Some of the stalls are open later. The market is divided into two main areas. The western block is the main art market and the eastern block is a traditional market serving daily groceries and necessities.

The surrounding rainforest and terraced rice paddies, dotted with Hindu temples and shrines, are among Bali’s most famous landscapes. Ancient holy sites include the intricately carved Goa Gajah (“Elephant Cave”) and Gunung Kawi, with its rock-cut shrines. A short drive outside Ubud will take you to Tegenungan Waterfall, Ubud Monkey Forest, and the photogenic Tegallalang rice terrace. Join a day trip to local villages like Campuhan, Penestanan, Peliatan and Batuan, where you can see locals making and selling authentic Balinese crafts. The pride and precision of the artisans will charm you and quite possibly change your life.

Ubud and Batuan are known for their paintings, Mas for its wood carvings, Celuk for gold and silversmiths, and Batubulan for stone carvings.

All are just a few miles part, which explains why Ubud is the center of activity. World-famous Balinese dance also is featured prominently across the community, especially in the evenings. Don’t miss your chance to see barong, lagong, kecak and the trance dance. They all are hypnotic and enchanting in their own way. Children often learn dance moves and hand gestures as soon as they can walk. Each gesture of the head, eyes, hands, and fingers are integral parts of storytelling.

Visit the island of the gods and don’t leave without experiencing the magic of Ubud.

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Approximately three million people live on Bali and about 90 percent of the people follow the Hindu religion. Balinese Hinduism was formed from a combination of existing local beliefs and Hindu influences from across Southeast Asia and South Asia. The Balinese, like all people of Hindu faith, believe their religion is one of holy water. Water symbolizes fullness. Water is the building block of life and all living beings are at the mercy of God for water.

The Balinese consider everything to be holy and they believe that physical and spiritual lives are indivisible. Balinese describe their attitude toward life as one with “happiness in duty.” Faith and fun are one. Festivals, ceremonies, dances, and trances are an integral part of Balinese life.

The local people make offerings to the gods every day. Typically, women prepare and deliver the offerings on behalf of their family. Most offerings are simple and include rice, flowers, and incense on a banana leaf. For special ceremonies, the offerings are much more elaborate.

The Balinese believe that when a child is born, it must not touch the ground during its first 105 days. During that time, they believe the baby is still living between heaven and earth and is not yet human. After three months, the family holds a ceremony to welcome the child to the material world and to give the child its name. From this point forward, the child can touch the earth.

Like all followers of the Hindu religion, the Balinese believe in reincarnation. Therefore, the lifelong goal of every Balinese person is to have a beautiful cremation ceremony. They believe the spirit is not released until the body is destroyed and the ashes are thrown to the sea. When a Balinese person dies, a surviving son must arrange for a cremation ceremony. Therefore, it’s important for every Balinese family to have at least one son.

Wealthier families have private cremation ceremonies fairly soon after a relative’s death. Families that don’t have the financial resources immediately available for the cremation may temporarily bury the body for up to 25 years, while they save enough money for the cremation ceremony. They also may join with other families recently who have lost a loved one. By joining together, they can conduct a mass cremation ceremony to make it more affordable.

The Balinese can’t cry when a relative passes away. If a tear falls to the earth, it grounds the spirit of the deceased, which prevents the spirit from leaving this world.

Balinese weddings happen in one of three ways. First, the parents can arrange a wedding between their children, without concern for the children’s preference. Secondly, the couple can ask their parents to agree and negotiate a relationship. Finally, if the children anticipate resistance from the parents, they can elope and negotiate with the parents later. On Bali and Lombok, the locals refer to eloping as “kidnapping.”

Like all followers of the Hindu religion, the Balinese follow the caste system. There are four classes of people and the priests are at the top of the system. Weddings between castes are allowed, but sometimes frowned upon. The bride always assumes the caste of the husband (up or down) and can’t return to her family’s caste if the marriage fails.

The Balinese also believe that their canine teeth attract evil spirits and bad human qualities, such as greed and jealousy. They historically believed that these teeth must be filed and flattened in order to be reincarnated. In the past, when children became adults, the village priest filed their canine teeth down to a uniform length. Although the Balinese have stopped this practice for humane reasons, they still conduct a symbolic filing on young adults that is brief and less intrusive.

The Balinese wear yellow or white clothing when entering a temple for a ceremony. Musicians, however, are exempt from this dress code and they usually wear very bright clothing.

Indonesia is the fourth-largest nation in the world with more than 267 million people. The country is comprised of more than 17,500 islands, including Bali.

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Bali is one of the most famous islands in the world. It offers everything from luxurious spas to the simple beach life. You can spend the morning on the beach and the afternoon near the top of a cloud-covered and chilly volcano. Choose world-class golf or world-class arts. You can find it all on the island of Bali.

Bali still has pockets of untapped beauty as serene and laid-back as ever. Today, Ubud is the most famous country village in the tropics, after last year’s Eat Pray Love, starring Julia Roberts, was filmed there. Bali’s reputation as a tropical island paradise has its roots in an expatriate artists’ colony in the hills near Ubud which, 80 years ago, attracted Noël Coward and Charlie Chaplin, among others.

In the 1960s, hippies flocked to the coconut groves of Kuta beach for the amazing surf and endless summer. Since then, Kuta has expanded at an exponential pace, north into gaudy, glittery Seminyak and beyond, where thickets of luxury resorts and private villas have risen in ancient rice fields, as if by a wizard’s spell.

When I arrived in Bali in 1993, the main cross-island road in the south was a washed-out gravel track, impassable after heavy rain; the internet was an exotic commodity, torturously slow when it worked at all; and there were no more than half a dozen restaurants that ventured beyond banana pancakes and croque-monsieur. A few of the big resorts had opened, attracting intrepid millionaires, and Kuta’s coconut groves had long since given way to budget hotels and homestays; yet Bali was still recognizably the sleepy, enchanted isle that time forgot.

In just 12 years the island has been transformed. Now there are fine restaurants in Ubud and Seminyak, and that cross-island track is a splendid four-lane motorway. But all this progress has come at a cost. Ubud may possess an indestructible charm, with its cultural treasures intact, but tourism is far and away the main business.

Seminyak offers gorgeous luxury accommodation with every mod con, and a nightlife ranging from chic to raucous, but it’s quite possible to spend two weeks in Bali and leave without being exposed to its fascinating traditions of village life.

To see Bali as it was 12 centuries ago, I drove out to West Bali National Park, which occupies most of the island’s western bulge, across a strait from Java’s eastern tip. Bali’s only national park, it comprises nearly 20,000 hectares of forest, with an additional 50,000 hectares protected from development.

The original forest here isn’t tropical rainforest as in the national parks of Java, but coastal savannah, with deciduous trees and thick underbrush. With not a coconut palm or a banana tree in sight, it doesn’t look like the Bali of brochures. You might think you were in rural Alabama or Sweden were it not for the monkeys, iguanas and pythons, and the gentle herds of russet-coloured mouse deer and muntjak which run throughout the park.

The Menjangan Resort occupies a good chunk of the park, but has a minimal impact on its surroundings. A pair of simple, solid-frame lodges face each other across a swimming pool shaded by ancient trees. The rooms are large and comfortable but unfussy, finished in natural woods, bamboo mats and fine Indonesian textiles. There is just one small clearing behind the guestrooms for a huge aviary that is home to 11 of the rarest birds on earth.

One of the national park’s primary missions is to promote the conservation of the Bali starling (Leucopsar rothschildi),a gorgeous white bird with black-tipped wings and tail, bright-blue eye patches and a jaunty crest. By 2001, its wild population had dwindled to just six; now it is estimated at more than 60. The park has around 160 avian species, making it a major destination for birdwatchers.

The resort takes its name from Pulau Menjangan (Deer Island), 10km off the north-east coast, which many believe has the best snorkeling in Bali, with its coral gardens like underwater palaces, frequented by an assortment of brilliantly colored fish. The island is uninhabited except for the deer which migrate there every year in a mass swim across the channel from the mainland.

A further hour’s drive along Bali’s north coastal road brought me to Lovina. The path to Lovina beach was well beaten by backpackers a long time ago. While it has the simple charms of any tropical beach, the pebbly strand and flat sea here are tame stuff compared to the mighty surf and white-sand beaches of Kuta and Seminyak.

The attraction of Lovina has always been its hip, relaxed style, and the low prices that come with it. In 1995, an enterprising Dane called Nils Normann looked up from the beach to the thickly forested hills facing the sea, and envisioned an inn in the European style, a country retreat with fine dining and sumptuous gardens. The result is the Damai, which opened with just eight bungalows, to which Normann has since added six handsome, roomy pool villas.

Indonesia has more than 17,500 islands, including Bali, Borneo, Java, Lombok, Sumatra and Sulawesi.

Get the most from your trip with the Language and Travel Guide to Indonesia. Learn where to go and what to say. Thousands of islands. Hundreds of cultures. One book. Watch our Indonesian tutorial.

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