South Bali (Kuta)

For the last leg of our tour to Bali, we moved our base to Kuta. We stayed at Ramayan Resort and Spa. Check out the review here.

This is a very touristy place and I guess it is the area which receives the maximum visitors in Bali. It has a number of hotels, restaurants (providing different cuisines), bars, etc. Kuta beach is a favorite amongst visitors and gets a number of surfers here. We witnessed the Mumukur ceremony here which is supposed to be similar to the Shraddha ceremony performed in India.

We ate at the Queen's in Kuta which offers authentic Indian cuisine. We loved it so much that, we had all our meals in Kuta here.

We did a short half-day site-seeing tour during our stay here. Our first stop was at the Garuda Wishnu Kencana. It is a cultural center where you can see Balinese dance in its open air amphitheater. We saw the Barong dance performance there. Barong is a lion like mythological creature of Bali. Barong represents the good and is an enemy of Rangda, the demon queen who represents the bad. The battle between Barong and Rangda is featured in Barong dance. 

Check below for the performance schedules at the center.

http://gwk-culturalpark.com/daily-events/

It has huge statues for Vishnu and Garuda. This is still a work in progress. When completed, it will depict Vishnu riding the Garuda and will be the tallest statue in the world. The partially completed statues are beautiful and worth a visit even with the current state of completion.

From here we went to Uluwatu. This was a fitting climax to our tour to the beautiful island of Bali. The temple is located at the edge of a cliff. You can walk along the edge of the steep cliff which offers spectacular views all along. The sound of waves of the roaring Indian Ocean is a constant companion. After seeing a grand sunset we made our way back to the hotel.  


Bali has lots to offer. By the end of the vacation, we had collected some fabulous memories of the place and were left with the feeling that given the time, there was so much more that we could have experienced.