If you want to experience the real Bali, this is the way to do it

There are two ways of visiting Bali. You can flop at a beach resort, shuffle around souvenir shops and add nightclub bags to your eyes. Or you can escape the tourist coast and pedal your way through a holiday feeling fit and fantastic, taking in glorious landscapes, village life and ancient temples along the way.

Credit: Jamie Brown

I belong to the second school of thought. The island’s interior moves to a different rhythm and, on a bike, all my senses are engaged. I can freewheel through villages and hear roosters cackle, palm leaves rustle and xylophones clatter. I might cycle past a stone-carver working on soft black volcanic rock, carving a pot-bellied gate guardian with a steady chip, chip, chip.

Village children love cyclists. They wave and giggle, and chat in the only English they know: “Where you from? Where you go? Why you bike?” After a while, their questions begin to sound almost existential.

Why do I bike? So I can sail past women in brightly coloured sarongs. So I can inhale incense drifting from village temples and the scent of cloves wafting from plantations, rather than the smell of car exhaust and spilled beer.

I bike so I can pedal past blue hydrangea hedges and gleaming green rice terraces, and admire volcanoes on the horizon. And sometimes, so I can lean my bike against a banyan tree to explore a temple, where gamelan musicians might be hammering away, or village men throwing dice in the shade.

My first day is always an easy pedal out of Ubud to acclimatise. A slow drift eastwards won’t torture my thighs, but gets me to Goa Gajah, whose caves, carved with sacred elephants, have been a retreat for Hindu priests for nearly 1000 years.

Bali’s interior moves to a different rhythm.Credit: iStock

Nearby Yeh Pulu has rock carvings and the region’s most sacred temple, Pura Penataran, has a 2000-year-old bronze kettledrum, the largest of its kind ever cast.

Then it’s time to get more ambitious, and head further afield. Cycling in Bali is hot and hilly work, but I can sit on wooden benches outside roadside stalls and pause over drinks or slabs of watermelon. “Where you go mister? Why you bike?”

When I’m tired, I can sling my bike onto the roof-rack of a bemo amid sacks of bananas and trussed chickens. Even better is to get a ride to a high point, then cycle back. The route from spectacular Mount Batur to Ubud is 40 kilometres, but gravity assists nearly the whole way.

Rural roads north of Ubud have none of southern Bali’s notorious traffic. The only hazards are occasional potholes and local farmers who might be out in the road raking rice to dry on woven mats. Local life comes marvellously to life from the saddle of a bike.

Oxen still plough the paddies. Ducks quack. The scenery is stunning. Rice terraces cascade down hillsides, ending in spills of foaming palm trees. Flowers and butterflies compete in colour competitions on road verges.

In the late afternoon, sudden rain showers might force me to take shelter for a while. Afterwards, I’m rewarded with teasing coolness and earth that smells as rich as plum pudding. Sunsets are spectacular. The light turns thick and luminescent as honey, and palm trees become dark splashes against an indigo horizon.

Bicycle days in Bali are good days. No raucous evening bars for me. I sleep like the dead and next morning it isn’t my head that throbs, only my legs.