Bali Tour Guide

It is 2007 in Gregorian calendar this year but it is only 1929 in Icaka year. Icaka is the name of the lunar-based Balinese calendar system. Melasti, the purification ceremony is held few days before the new year by almost all of the villages in Bali.

My village does the Melasti three days before the New Year. We depart very early in the morning in order to avoid the heat in the beach. Once we arrive in Lembeng beach (just north east of Sanur Beach), there were already many other villages held similar ceremony. Some of them even finish already. Traffic jam cannot be avoided. We need to wait a while before we can get space to place all of our sacred symbols. Below are some pictures I took before and after the praying. <--more!-->

The ceremony in the beach last about less then two hours. Another traffic jam we have to deal with on the way back. When we get back to the village, all the sacred symbols were placed in one of our village temple (Pura Desa). Another worship would be done that evening. I was always curious to see Melasti ceremony in other part of Bali, so that afternoon I went to Seseh Beach (close to Tanah Lot) to see it and trying to take some pictures. Wishing to get sunset as the background. But I was not that lucky. It was cloud and a bit of rain. However, below are some pictures I managed to take while holding umbrella.

The next day I met Margaret and Maorin to do a tour and they would like to attend a Melasti ceremony. I decided to bring them to Ketewel beach in which I knew from before there would be one held there. Although, after a quite long traffic jam we managed to get there in time as the procession that we want to see also cannot get through the traffic. In order to get the destination beach, the procession needs to cross a shallow river so did we. Our sarong gets wet but it was interesting scene after all.