About Bali Island

Bali, the famed Island of the Gods, with its varied landscape of hills and mountains, rugged coastlines and sandy beaches, lush rice terraces and barren volcanic hillsides all providing a picturesque backdrop to its colourful, deeply spiritual and unique culture, stakes a serious claim to be paradise on earth. With world-class surfing and diving, a large number of cultural, historical and archaeological attractions, and an enormous range of accommodations, this is one of the world’s most popular island destinations and one which consistently wins travel awards. Bali has something to offer a very broad market of visitors from young back-packers right through to the super-rich.

Bali is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, Bali for few years awarded as the world best island by The International Travel Magazine. There, however, are still many people who do not know in depth about the uniqueness of Balinese culture. Life in Bali is always related to “Tri Hita Karana” or a tripartite concept that include the spiritual relationship between human and God, and their environment.The rapid growth of development in tourism has had a big impact and influences to Bali tradition and lifestyle. Interestingly, Balinese culture is still as what it was, growing along with the of globalization. It is the Balinese civilization what makes the island different from other destination. Bali is one island of Indonesia which has about 13,000 islands in all. Bali is located just 2 kilometers away from the eastern tip of the Java Island and Lombok Island. The island is home of approximately 4 million people. It is approximately 144 kilometers from east to west and 80 kilometers north to south. There are varied landscapes of hills and mountains, rugged coastlines and sandy beaches, lush rice terraces and barren volcanic hillsides which provide a picturesque backdrop to the colorful and deeply spiritual culture of this ‘Island of The Gods’. The word “paradise” is used a lot in Bali. Eighty percent of international visitors to Indonesia visit Bali or visit Bali specially. The popularity is not without reason. The first Hindus arrived at Bali as early as 100 BC. So it is easy to understand why the island has such a long time to develop its own culture. But the current chapter for Bali’s history begins in the seventies when intrepid hippies and surfers discovered Bali’s beaches and waves. Tourism soon became the main resource of income.Despite the shocks of the terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2005, the magical island continues to draw crowds. Bali’s culture remains as spectacular as ever. There are an estimated 20,000 temples (pura) on the island, each of which holds festivals (odalan) at least twice a year and there are many other auspicious days throughout the year. There are always festivities going on. There are some large festivals that are celebrated island wide, but their dates are determined by two local calendars. The 210-day wuku or Pawukon calendar is completely out of sync with the Western calendar while the lunar saka (caka) calendar roughly follows the Western year.