pura lempuyang

We only spent two days in Bali, even though I was completely in love with it, because we really wanted to go to Labuan Bajo to do some diving, so we had to be kind of picky about the things we were going to do.

I had seen pictures of the Pura Lempuyang temple, and it was so gorgeous I really wanted to go. I didn’t realize how far it was from Ubud, about 2 1/2 hours, but we did some other things on the way back so it wasn’t too bad. When I told the lady at our homestay where we wanted to go, she was kind of surprised, because apparently not a lot of tourists go there.

She kind of tried to talk us out of it, because it was kind of far away, and she tried to convince us to go to the top of the volcano instead, which sounded kind of amazing, but also really busy, since it’s one of those things that a lot of tourists do when they are in Bali. But she had been to Pura Lempuyang herself, and told us how gorgeous it was, so we decided to check it out.

We set out at about 5 a.m., with our driver, who was really cool and had traveled all over the world. He ended up climbing up to the top of the mountain with us, even though he didn’t have to, and along the way he told us all about the Hindu religion in Bali, what they believe, and how it’s different from Hinduism in India. It was really interesting.

The climb itself was kind of arduous. We knew going into it that it was 1700 steps to the top, but what we didn’t know was that there was actually a lot of walking and climbing of stairs before we even arrived at the 1700 stairs. I had to bribe myself with Oreos just to keep my legs moving.

It was kind of chilly out when we left, at least 4 people told us to bring jackets and wear pants, but we didn’t listen and thank goodness for that.

I was cold for about the first 15 steps, but once we really got into the climb I was so hot and sweaty that I was very glad I didn’t wear more clothing. I did bring a sarong though, since you need one to enter the temples, so bring one if you’ll be visiting, or they rent them at the bottom.

Unfortunately, it was kind of cloudy and foggy on the day that we visited, but just as we were arriving it cleared off for a few minutes so we could see the gorgeous view, including the volcano.

The views were gorgeous, and my legs were shaking so bad the next day I could barely walk, but the most memorable thing for me was the monkeys.

We were told at the bottom of the climb that the monkeys at the top were very aggressive and would bite and attack people who were climbing up, especially if they were carrying food, so we were each given a thick wooden walking stick, and given a crash course in monkey beating.