If you are into doing a great natural exercise or exploring
the real beauty of Bali’s country side, I would love to suggest one of a
fabulous walk that you can do around the charming village of Taman. This great
walk brings you into the insight of natural beauty and life of the local
people. For the duration of almost 4 hours, you are going to follow the ancient
farmer’s track, windy rice paddies dike, amazing irrigation canals, small
village’s roads, and scenic path along the ridge of the lush Ayung River valley.
The first hour, we are going to walk through the scenic
terrace paddy field where we have the opportunity to share with you the ancient
Subak Irrigation system and observing about the rice cultivation system and
rotation throughout the year. You would also have so much of opportunity to get
some great shots to memorize you great exploring in this beautiful terrace
paddy field.
It depends on the time of the rice stage that we are doing
the walk as it is very often that we would be entertained by the groups of
ducks that are feeding themselves on the rice field which is especially after
the harvesting season. The duck Sheppard bring their duck over to the field to
feed themselves with the left over rice after the harvesting and also eating
all kinds of bugs and tiny creature such as frog, tadpole, warm, eel and many
others. The ducks also help the farmers to weed up the field and to manure the
soil. It is building such a great mutual relationship between the rice farmers
and the duck Sheppard as they both are benefited by this.
From this rice paddies adventures, we are walking into the
village of Bongkasa where we would be provided with a real scene of village’s
life and a chance to share a little knowledge about the traditional family
compound, community structure as well as admiring the beauty of Bali’s
traditional architecture that are captured into the local houses, gates and
temples. When we walk through the village’s road that we often have to aware of
the local dogs that are always be free wandering around the village. They often
create such a noise when we are following these small village roads even there
are some of them would just be lazy sleeping in the middle of the road and just
ignoring the present of the visitors that are passing by. They are not wild or
street dogs, but they are belong to the local family but they spend most of
their day time to wander around the village, picking up food on the street or
just having their socializing with other village’s gods. Besides dogs, we are
also entertained by the domestic animals like chicken, ducks, pigs, cats, and
Bali cows.
We visit giant old Banyan tree that grows on the outer
courtyard of the local village temple to have some time to rest and admire the
stunning tree with its great shade to cool us off from our walk. This tree is
surely hundreds of years old and considered to be very sacred trees by the
local inhabitant. It has a small temple built under the trees where the local
people are doing their ceremonies dedicated to the Holy Spirit that is believed
to reside on this holy Banyan trees.
The village lies along the western side of the Ayung River
which is the longest one on the island of Bali. We follow the farmer’s track
along the ridge of this lush river valley, looking over the snaky river gorge
with stunning terrace field down to the bank of the river with some beautiful
water cascading over the terraces.
We walk back to the village after following this fabulous
track to our finishing point of our great walk and having the opportunity to
taste some young fresh coconut to end our fantastic day’s adventure in the
great nature of Bali.
Enjoying our lunch box while we are enjoying such a stunning panorama over the Ayung gorge.
Local farmer is leading his cows to the nearby stream for bathing them.
Walking across a swinging wooden bridge by the Ayung River
Stunning terrace paddy field down to the bank of the Ayung River.
Walking along the tiny dikes of the local rice paddies while enjoying the great scenery over terraces and learning about the rice farming system.
