Ubud, Bali: marvel at the rice terraces of Tegalalang

For a morning full of nature on Bali you go to the impressive rice terraces of Tegalalang. Tegalalang is a top tourist spot above Ubud. The rice terraces are a feast for the eye.

Enjoy all the beauty Tegalalang has to offer.

Rice terraces on Bali, a rice-terrace paradise

Say Baliand you say rice fields. The association is as strong as that of windmills with Holland.

What if we take that comparison a step further? In that case Bali offers a kind of rice-terrace version of the Zaanse Schans: Tegalalang. This popular spot is a guaranteed rice-terrace paradise for the eye.

And like the Zaanse Schans, Tegalalang normally draws tourists. A great many. Which is why we explicitly mentioned the morning.

• Arrive between eight and nine, for instance. It is still nice and quiet then. With fewer people, walking through this area is a great deal more pleasant. Take your time, look around at your leisure.

The calm of the morning fits perfectly with the high-stacked, green terracedlandscape.

Tegalalang: a commercial mess?

Where there is much-discussed natural beauty, there are tourists. Where there are tourists, there is commerce. You cannot escape that on a visit to Tegalalang, of course.

• Lovers of authenticity object to the many instagrammable instagrammable ‘installations’.
• These include purpose-built platforms with nests, beds and hearts, as well as large swings.

(Those things have swamped Bali's attractions anyway. For a fee you supposedly get a very romantic moment for two. Briefly, that is, because the queue is long and the next ‘perfect couple’ wants an equally super-spontaneous picture together.)

For that reason some people advise against these terraces. We find that rather a shame, because Tegalalang really does have natural splendour of its own. The original terraces dominate what you see.

And it is those terraces themselves that are more than worth seeing. Especially if you come in the morning.

The entrance fee

Finally, the entrance fee. We did not have to pay anything at all, possibly because we were so early.

Later tourists paid 15,000 IDR before corona, Indonesian rupiah, comparable to the entrance fee for the Tibumana waterfall. At the current exchange rate that is less than a euro.