So I normally leave my blog posting until after I have left the country I am blogging about, however with leaving Indonesia straight after my yoga course finishes, and deciding I would write a separate blog for my teacher training I decided it would be nice to get a few things down of our visits so far into the depths of Indonesia.
Our Indonesian part of the trip didn’t go as planned, which I guess is part of the beauty of travelling in terms of route change, everything happens for a reason and I totally believe this with our next few weeks we had planned. When we left Derawan (Indonesian Borneo) we had planned to dive into the thick of Indonesia, exploring the rainforest of Kalimantan and driving hours overland to glimpse that unknown village and beautiful primate, what we hadn’t realised was the lack of transport due to bad roads and therefore the distance overland journeys would take. We sat down and realistically looked at how much time we wanted to spend in this part of Indonesia, realizing we only had a week planned for this part of the journey we realistically didn’t believe we had the time and didn’t think it would be worthwhile stressing ourselves with the journeys for a few days here and there, for me that wouldn’t be an experience and would just be a headache, so with that in mind we headed to the nearest airport and jumped on a plane to Java and prepared ourselves for a journey to Bromo Volcano.
We flew into Surabaya and chose to stay there for one evening, arriving at night left us slightly disorientated but I felt a real city feeling when driving through the bright lights and fast pace of the hustle and bustle. We only had one night planned so after a long days travel from Derawan we settled for a sound sleep, excited to be heading to Bromo earlier than planned. We woke early the next morning and knew it would take around a day to get across to East Java where Bromo is situated, we had done quite a lot of research around Bromo as wanted to climb without a guide, the internet is amazing for its wealth of personal information and we found one women’s blog which was just an incredible guide for the climb. After a few buses from Surabaya we arrived at Problingo and shared a taxi with another English couple and Swiss couple, the journey was a short one too Cemoro Lawang, which is the small village next to Bromo, where you stay before the climb.
It was early evening so we decided to climb to the crater rim, it was such an incredible sight, I was really taken aback, this being my first experience of being so close to a volcano, the vast beauty and landscape surrounding were just dazzling to the eye and the dusk time walk just felt the perfect way to head to Mt Bromo. We took the path down the hill from Cemoro Lawang, missing out walking through the main Bromo office, we started our walk across the volcanic sands, it was incredible in the middle of the sands was the most beautiful Hindu Temple, sat lonesome but with such stature and magnificence, it was a treat to witness but also wonder who visited as it felt far from any main town or village. After about an hrs walk we arrived at the steps to make our ascent up to the crater rim and with determination, I managed to make it to the top, huffing and puffing. It was amazing up there, with the smoke billowing out and the sun setting, it felt a really beautiful time to see the crater and experience this natural wonder, we took some time out up the top and watched the sun come down over the sands and turn the sky beautiful colours of orange. As night started to approach we realised we had a long walk back and only a small torch, we managed to get about half way across the sands before it turned pitch black, with a little bit of confusion we managed to join the back of some other trekkers and followed their lead back to Cemoro Lawang. After eating another plate of Mie Goreng we took to our beds, ready to wake at 2am to climb to the viewing point to watch sunrise over Bromo.
We woke without problem and started the climb in the dark, we had mapped out our route and grouped with the others staying in our home stay, we decided to take the climb at our pace due to my knee, this worked fine for the first bit and after about an hour and a bit of walking we arrived at the first viewing point. We could see the option of higher viewing points but sadly the path had become over run and wasn’t as clear as we hoped, after about 30mins of rustling around and taking a number of dead ends we managed to find the trail again and we then really started to climb, as you can imagine at 4am this wasn’t the easiest thing and with a number of trips, skips and a huge face plant I finally broke, the tears came and my knee felt like it was about to explode. At this point I will admit I did feel like giving up and telling Sam to go on, but after 5mins of sorting my thinking out and believing in myself I managed to hobble on, making it to the viewing point just as sun was rising. When we arrived here I suddenly realised why I had needed to carry on, the view was astounding and like something I have never seen before, it really was truly beautiful and Mt Bromo just looked spectacular, the dreamy mist that surrounded the volcano, the smoke circling out, the clouds in front of us, it was a dream like scene and I felt proud of my own ability but it felt magical to be sharing it with such a wonderful group of people. We sat snuggled, eating our morning treats and silenced ourselves at the views spanning out in front of us. After sun rose we took the time to wander around, drink some coffee with some locals and then attempt the descent back down, amazed at how we had just climbed it in the dark.
We snoozed the rest of the morning away then the 6 of us took the taxi back down to Probilingo, going our separate ways, not without some great hugs, facebook befriending and well wishes for the end of our travels. We decided to make the long journey across to Bali, we were going to head to Ijen but with my knee in a bad way we decided to take on the trek on the way back (however this has now changed again and Sam will be doing this whilst I am training). Without going into it we had a bit of a nightmare journey, Indonesia seems to be good for this and had to stay in a random hotel in a random town for the night, starting again the next morning and marvelously making it to Bali and our very nice accommodation in Ubud.
We had decided to take some time out in Ubud and stay for 5/7 days to really recuperate and get back to us after all the disjointed travel, unwanted stress and smelly hotel rooms. I had always wanted to visit Ubud as heard a lot of good things about it, Sam wasn’t too fussed but decided it would be nice to just relax for a bit instead of being on the move. Ubud really did live up to its vision I had, although touristy it has such a beautiful feeling about it and with Bali meaning offering you could feel the sense of community in the air. Our accommodation was back from the main street which was amazing for us as gave us the feeling of not being in the main tourist hub and also allowed us to feel it was okay just to do nothing for a few days. Before coming to Ubud I had looked into the Yogabarn which is highly recommended for its variations of classes it holds, I picked out YIN Yoga class and took to the 1.5hr session ready and willing for some rejuvenation, the class was incredible and really got me going, the teaching was so great and I just knew at that moment I had to engage in this further, after speaking with the class teacher, Denise she informed me she was running a teacher training course on the 18th June, at that instant I knew I had to book a place on the course and before I knew it I was signed up to start the month long training, with this decided Sam and I chose to head to an Island off Bali for a week before the course started.
(I am going to blog about my course when finished so will leave the details above at that).
We headed off to Nusa Lembongan and it really felt a holiday from a holiday, ridiculous right, we took a small bag, leaving our main ones at our accommodation in Ubud and took the boat across to Nusa. Nusa is a small island off the Southeast coast of Bali and is a really popular surfing and diving spot, it has different parts to the island for different activities but is really beautiful place to just relax. We managed to find a beautiful quiet nook of one the beaches away from the surfing zone, we spent most days enjoying our time reading and swimming, and just getting back into our bodies preparing me for the hard work ahead over the next month.
We also took one day out to snorkel, but as we called it extreme snorkeling as the sea was so choppy and at points I couldn’t even enter the water as the current was so strong, I did however enjoy a few moments and dared the water at times. Sam had a great day however and really got in there, enjoying all five different spots we snorkeled at.
With our week coming to an end we spent our last night with new friends celebrating their engagement and enjoying the sounds of the open mic night. We fell asleep that night ready to head back to Ubud in the morning fully satisfied with our week away on Nusa Island.
My course started that week and I was a bag of nerves and excitement at the prospect of committing myself to a month’s training, I went and purchased myself a notebook and prepared myself like the first day of school, knowing we would be in Ubud 1 month we did some shopping and fell into Ubud life pretty quickly, Sam finding his local haunt to watch the world cup and me working out the best shortcut to get to class each day. I have blogged separately about my training so won’t start writing a full blog here but will include my time in Ubud as we joined in a number of things outside of the course and both become firm friends with two heartwarming Canadians, Ash and Mike, eating many a weekly meal with them and enjoying their company greatly.
Ubud is an interesting place, I througherly enjoyed every minute there and miss it so much, it has definitely been a highlight of my trip and maybe that’s because we become nested there it felt like home from home (with a lot more sun). There is talk of an ‘Ubud community’ and being at the yoga barn you totally see and feel this as you become part of the everyday rituals and routines for some. There is a lot of expacts living in Bali and even attending a few nights about love and togetherness you could feel people had found something important to them and a sense of belonging in a spiritual community. For me I could go with this, I could understand it and sit back and enjoy watching it, for Sam at times I think he found it a bit much, obviously being Sam and unspiritual as they come, however what was beautiful to see was even Sam letting go, sharing things he would never share at chakra day and even letting go of a lantern with a meaningful message on instead of asking for Fulham to win the league (or something football related).
I have went through my thoughts on the yogabarn constantly, how it is a ‘yoga business’ how it doesn’t bring in the type of communities I wish to work with now qualified, how it is a money making enterprise but something draws me back to the love of it and how it is a community, when writing an email to a friend the other day I explained it as a community of yoga, it’s a place where there are so many different types of people attending but one thing is that there all there for yoga and isn’t that in itself just beautiful?
Ubud has so many great eateries, cafes, and local restaurants, organic supermarkets and everything you could need for being based there for a month, we ate the most sumptuous food every night and even relaxed in some nights, using the kitchen at our guesthouse and catching up on some tv series or other. We also spent our 2nd year anniversary in Ubud and went to an amazing resturant called Kebun, it was recommended by my yoga teacher and we ate like royalty, with the gift from our families we had a nice amount of money to spend and ordered the most delicious lamb shanks (for Sam) and salmon for me, a carafe of the most tasty red wine turned up (a present from my yoga teacher, amazing right?) and we even had millie feuille slices, it was such a nice evening and even though the rain poured we couldnt have been anywhere more special at that time. Sam even bought me some flowers, now that's saying something!
Sam took a couple of days away with Mike, (my friend Ashley’s husband) and they went and climbed Kawah Ijen, on his return he stated it was one of the best experiences he has had travelling as talking with the sulpher miners and being in a working volcano was just a mind blowing experience.
For both of us though one of our main highlights was spending 1hr 30mins sweating and dancing at ecstatic dance, there’s one rule, no talking just dancing, it’s a place to totally let yourself go and do what your body tells you, the upstairs room at the yogabarn is full to the brim of smiling sweaty humans just having the most beautiful uplifting time, we both agreed we have never felt so free and so at one just letting ourselves and our bodies just go where the music wanted, we dance so much at festivals, gigs and clubs but in this space at Sunday at 11am there really was no one else watching allowing our souls to be in the time and space and be whoever we wanted to be.
We left Ubud with our hearts contented, Ubud and Ijen will forever be special to us both, were so thankful of our time there and we both had the most wonderful life changing experiences there, I have never felt so lucky to be having this experience and opportunity to travel as we are, blessed.
My course started that week and I was a bag of nerves and excitement at the prospect of committing myself to a month’s training, I went and purchased myself a notebook and prepared myself like the first day of school, knowing we would be in Ubud 1 month we did some shopping and fell into Ubud life pretty quickly, Sam finding his local haunt to watch the world cup and me working out the best shortcut to get to class each day. I have blogged separately about my training so won’t start writing a full blog here but will include my time in Ubud as we joined in a number of things outside of the course and both become firm friends with two heartwarming Canadians, Ash and Mike, eating many a weekly meal with them and enjoying their company greatly.
Ubud is an interesting place, I througherly enjoyed every minute there and miss it so much, it has definitely been a highlight of my trip and maybe that’s because we become nested there it felt like home from home (with a lot more sun). There is talk of an ‘Ubud community’ and being at the yoga barn you totally see and feel this as you become part of the everyday rituals and routines for some. There is a lot of expacts living in Bali and even attending a few nights about love and togetherness you could feel people had found something important to them and a sense of belonging in a spiritual community. For me I could go with this, I could understand it and sit back and enjoy watching it, for Sam at times I think he found it a bit much, obviously being Sam and unspiritual as they come, however what was beautiful to see was even Sam letting go, sharing things he would never share at chakra day and even letting go of a lantern with a meaningful message on instead of asking for Fulham to win the league (or something football related).
I have went through my thoughts on the yogabarn constantly, how it is a ‘yoga business’ how it doesn’t bring in the type of communities I wish to work with now qualified, how it is a money making enterprise but something draws me back to the love of it and how it is a community, when writing an email to a friend the other day I explained it as a community of yoga, it’s a place where there are so many different types of people attending but one thing is that there all there for yoga and isn’t that in itself just beautiful?
Ubud has so many great eateries, cafes, and local restaurants, organic supermarkets and everything you could need for being based there for a month, we ate the most sumptuous food every night and even relaxed in some nights, using the kitchen at our guesthouse and catching up on some tv series or other. We also spent our 2nd year anniversary in Ubud and went to an amazing resturant called Kebun, it was recommended by my yoga teacher and we ate like royalty, with the gift from our families we had a nice amount of money to spend and ordered the most delicious lamb shanks (for Sam) and salmon for me, a carafe of the most tasty red wine turned up (a present from my yoga teacher, amazing right?) and we even had millie feuille slices, it was such a nice evening and even though the rain poured we couldnt have been anywhere more special at that time. Sam even bought me some flowers, now that's saying something!
Sam took a couple of days away with Mike, (my friend Ashley’s husband) and they went and climbed Kawah Ijen, on his return he stated it was one of the best experiences he has had travelling as talking with the sulpher miners and being in a working volcano was just a mind blowing experience.
For both of us though one of our main highlights was spending 1hr 30mins sweating and dancing at ecstatic dance, there’s one rule, no talking just dancing, it’s a place to totally let yourself go and do what your body tells you, the upstairs room at the yogabarn is full to the brim of smiling sweaty humans just having the most beautiful uplifting time, we both agreed we have never felt so free and so at one just letting ourselves and our bodies just go where the music wanted, we dance so much at festivals, gigs and clubs but in this space at Sunday at 11am there really was no one else watching allowing our souls to be in the time and space and be whoever we wanted to be.
We left Ubud with our hearts contented, Ubud and Ijen will forever be special to us both, were so thankful of our time there and we both had the most wonderful life changing experiences there, I have never felt so lucky to be having this experience and opportunity to travel as we are, blessed.
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