THE TEMPLES OF BALI (PART I)

I had heard or read that the Balinese temples were the best in Asia.  There are 25,000 of them and additionally practically every household has its own.  Many rituals are followed.  For example, the people prepare small offerings with a piece of bamboo on which rests a little blob of rice and maybe a kumquat or an orange slice and place them in the doorways of every edifice from the humblest of abodes to the grandest of the royal temples.  They sit there until they rot and then are replaced.

Komang picked us up at the hotel our second day and drove us all around Ubud and to several of the local temples, including the famous Elephant Cave, an ancient cave in honor of  Ganesh, the god with the head of an elephant and the body of a human being.  Ubud is hectic and congested and much larger than I thought it would be.  It is the major inland tourist town.  Luckily our hotel was set back on the edge of the monkey forest and we couldn't hear any of the traffic or people noise from the city.  Frankly, I was disappointed in the Ubud temples we saw--they didn't live up to what I had read and were mostly dry, hot, open courtyards. 

Locals hanging out in a temple courtyard.

 Many of the temples are composed of multiple small buildings.

Even if you are modestly dressed, everyone, male and female alike, must wear a sarong inside the temples.  This is the ancient and intricately carved Elephant Cave Temple.

 The god Ganesh inside the cave with multiple offerings brought by the faithful.

But the next day, we saw the temples of our dreams.  We drove out of the city deep into the mountains...

More tomorrow...