Hitchhiking in Indonesia: Singaraja to Karangasem and Lempuyang Temple
15th of February, 2025.
After I dismount my tent, the workers put up another one for some guest. They are busy!
I eat some of my rice crackers and my amazing soy + grains milk, and get ready to leave. I meet the owner, a lovely woman, and she even invites me for breakfast. But as I already ate, I kindly refuse.
The idea is to first get a short lift to some interesting gates nearby here, at the entrance of Handara Golf Club. I get the lift quite fast, but the gates are a huge disappointment. You have to pay to take a photo! It’s a fucking golf club and you have to pay to take a photo in front of the gates? Bullshit!
I get a lift to Singaraja with a young man. He likes travelling too and he works with some kind of camping place. Once we get to his home, he says he can give me a lift in his motorbike to another place a bit further, Penarukan village. I accept, even though we are all crowded in his motorbike. But the worst thing is that I loose my hat somewhere on the way. And it was a second hand one, given to me by a friend, Polina, in Thailand.
Soon enough a guy going all the way to Karamgasem takes me. He’s going back home, as he does every weekend, after working the week in Singaraja. He lives in a small village, and he drops me off in an intersection towards Lempuyang Temple. I got to know about this temple yesterday, by Will and Alberta, who gave me a lift to Beratan Lake. As I checked online, it says you must pay 75000 INR entrance fee, but on MapsMe it shows a “sneaky free entrance”, so I decide to check that.
As I get out of the car, it starts to rain. I wait for a while, and when it stops, I start walking again. But then the rain comes and stay for about one hour. I hide in a shop. As sunset approaches, I decide to ask for a place to camp in the small village of Basangalas, from which the temple is about one hour walking. If I camp there tonight, tomorrow morning I can leave my backpack somewhere and walk to the temple.
A lady gives me a ride in her motorbike until Basangalas. She actually invites me to stay in her house, but as she leaves around 10 minutes from here, I kindly refuse.
In Basangalas, I enter what looks like a temple, but which actually is a mix of houses from the same family. I start a conversation with a girl and her brother. They talk with their family members about me camping here, and about talking with their RT. In the end, they offer me a place to stay outside one of the houses, which is like a bed, so I don’t use my tent, just my mattress and my sleeping bag. They seem happy to have me around.
Unfortunately, as night arrives, I have a migraine crises, so I cannot even eat properly the instant noodles they made. And I was starving before that, as I hadn’t eaten anything proper the whole day! That’s probably one of the reasons for my migraine too. And the noodles were great, with some eggs and all. I felt really bad but there’s nothing I could do. After taking a shower I try to sleep.
I suffered a lot that night, the migraine would come and go, I had not much water, my stomach was empty. Wow!
Luckily, I feel much better next morning. But again, I only have some coffee and crackers for breakfast, and then I go to the temple.
The trail / short cut to the sneaky free entrance is a lot uphill. After a lot of struggle and sweat, I get there, only to find a huge construction going on. What a shame! A senior man approaches me and he says I must wear a sarong, this traditional Bali clothing, which is basically a large piece of fabric, that you tie around your waist. He shows me how to go around, and say I must make a donation. As he shows me a list with names of tourists, dates and how much did they pay, I can see only large payments, like 100 or 200 which doesn’t make any sense. Why someone would pay almost the entrance fee from the main gate to enter from the gate behind? Anyway, as I didn’t pay for the ferry on my way to Bali, I decide to give 10.000 only and that’s what I tell the man. He shows me something about the sarong borrowing being something like 20.000. I tell him I cannot give anything more, so he agrees.
You must find your way though the men at work, and there’s rocks and earth being turned out everywhere. I should’ve taken a photo of the map which the man had showed me but I didn’t. As I get to a small food stand, I ask the woman there how to get to these famous gates for photos. She indicates for me to go downstairs. I’m tempted to go to another temple, upstairs, which seems to take a long time because it’s all steps. So by a miracle I make a wise decision and decide to go to the gate first, and on my way back, if I still have the strength, I go to the other temple.
All the way down to the gates takes about 20 minutes walking. I pass by two tourist traps, which consist of platforms at the edge of the cliffs with swings and seats, where people can take photos for a fortune.
At the gates, a nightmare. It feels like anything but a sacred place or a temple. It sucks! And they say a lot of bullshit to be done, like you must be touched by sacred water before entering (what a hell? And I even wasn’t! Laugh. But I’ve seen other people being “purified”); not wearing shoes; women during their menstruation period cannot enter (I would like to see they checking that…); and the sarong thing. But the most absurd thing is that the photos you see online are fake! There’s a group of locals sitting in chairs right in front of the gates, with big sunblock umbrellas, and you give them your phone, your ticket, and they will use a shining surface under your phone to make that “water” effect which you see in the photos. Bullshit! And it gets worse! They keep counting the poses you have, literally like these: “First pose, second pose, third pose, fourth pose, last pose”; and the tourist just keep on doing that, like flying monkeys. I tell you, I felt disgusted. And it is supposed to be a temple. What a load of bullshit!
On my way back, as it is already the time I should be back to Bansagalas, I decide not going to the other temple. As I’m leaving the complex, it starts to rain. I’m planning on hitchhiking back to Bansagalas, and I get really lucky with one of the trucks working at the construction to be leaving too, so they give me a lift. Yay!
We pass through some cute rice fields before arriving back to Bansagalas, and I wish I had taken some photos.
When I star walking and hitchhiking at the same time, a foreigner from the West, and her dog, stop for me. I told her where I am hoping to get, but even though she lives here, she didn’t understand. How can you live in another country and do not get to know the names of the places around? It’s like you are just temporarily staying, like a long vacation, and you only know the way to the shops and markets, that’s it. In anyhow, the place where she drops me off is not so far from the city of Amlapura, so I stay here and try to hitchhike towards there. Middle time, I ask for water in a local house, and a very polite young boy gives to me.
Dody stops his car and he’s going to his home in Amlapura. When he asks me if I am real and from this world, I think he’s just saying what so many other people have told me before, as it happened quite a few times. What I didn’t know is that he has experienced contact with dead people, as he tells me. He gave a lift to a couple once, and afterwards, other people were asking him why he was talking to himself, as they couldn’t see anyone with him in the car.
As we talk, he invites me to come and meet his family. I come. His wife — is a lovely woman, and I meet also his young daughter and his teenager boy. His house is really nice, with a great view of the region, and a beautiful temple. I also meet their neighbour, —, a lovely woman who lives alone and says to be very worried about my safety, travelling alone and camping with local families.
I should be going to Kuta today, but as Dody invites me to stay, and I have the time, I stay. — prepares me some delicious noodles and tea. Dody also buys some delicious fried tofu, tempeh and banana. In the evening, we come to another neighbour’s house, a lady from Timor Leste. I try some of her homemade buns, and some more fried tofu.
Next morning, after some coffee, traditional local food, and fried bananas, Dody gives me a lift a bit outside town.
10 Years Around the World 