There are 3 main reasons people seem to come to Bali: yoga, surfing, or diving. Watching the surfers navigate the surfs breaking offshore at Jungutbatu I realized that all three lifestyle “sports” combine overcoming, or mastering, your body’s capabilities. All three also are grounded in nature. Even yoga, even if it perhaps is grounded in the universe at large.
Surfing, diving, climbing, and yoga seem to attract similar people. Many gear shops and brands specialize in more than one of these at once. Yet I felt as out of place in the Jungutbatu surfing community as I did in the Mushroom bay diving community. Ubud and its yoga community, however, felt just right. Organic, raw food, wellness shops and quiet temples in town; and rice paddies, chickens, and rural life just around the corner. Yet Ubud is a bubble far from ordinary Balinese life – just like a surf shack village is.
In the end, any activity that increases awareness of ourselves as well as of the health of our beautiful but threatened planet is good. I wish more people chose surfing, diving, or yoga over computer games or the gym. I wish more people prioritized to live in the world, instead of just existing in it. Our world is beautiful – but it is not forever, not for us humans.
(Jungutbatu and Mushroom Bay, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia; August 2015)
November 17, 2015 at 12:46 am
Very beautiful, dreamy pictures!
November 17, 2015 at 7:29 am
Thank you!