Nusa Penida

Nusa Penida was settled from Bali, and its dry, rocky plateau made it a hard place to live: maize, cassava and, later, seaweed did better than rice. In Balinese tradition the island was long regarded as the home of dangerous unseen forces, associated with plague and misfortune, and its temples still draw pilgrims from the mainland. That reputation, and the currents of the Badung Strait, kept the island at a distance from the mainland for centuries.

Under the kingdom of Klungkung, which ruled the island from the Bali mainland, Nusa Penida served in part as a place of exile for those the court removed from society, and the descendants of exiles are part of the island's population. The Dutch took control after the fall of the Klungkung court in 1908, and the island remained an administrative district of Klungkung Regency, as it still is today.

For most of the 20th century people farmed, fished and left: migration to Bali, Java and abroad for work was normal, and remittances mattered more than local income. Seaweed farming spread through the shallows around Toyapakeh and the neighbouring islands from the 1980s and became the mainstay of the coastal villages. Tourism arrived late — first divers, drawn by manta rays and the ocean sunfish that come up from deep water, then, from the 2010s, day-trippers photographing the cliffs. Within a decade fast boats, new roads and hundreds of guesthouses transformed a place that had been among the poorer corners of Bali province.

The island is Balinese Hindu almost throughout, with a small Muslim community around Toyapakeh whose ancestors came as traders and fishers. Village life follows the same institutions as the mainland — the banjar as neighbourhood council, temple anniversaries called odalan reckoned on the 210-day Balinese calendar, Galungan and Kuningan, and Nyepi, when everything on the island stops for a day of silence including the boats.

What sets Nusa Penida apart is its place in Balinese belief. Mainland Balinese come by boat to make offerings at its temples, particularly for protection from illness. Cave temples such as Goa Giri Putri, entered through a gap barely wide enough for one person and used for the melukat purification ritual, show how the limestone itself has been drawn into worship. Shrines stand at cliff edges and on hilltops far from any village.

Customs are those of rural Bali rather than the resorts. A sarong and sash are worn to enter a temple, offerings left on doorsteps and paths are stepped around, and beachwear away from the sand reads as disrespect. The island remains a conservative, hard-working place where visitors are a recent arrival, and courtesy — a greeting, a request before a photograph, patience on a single-lane road — is noticed and returned.

About 66,000 people live in the Nusa Penida district by recent official estimates, up from 45,110 at the 2010 census; the district covers Penida itself, the smaller islands of Lembongan and Ceningan and eleven islets, with Sampalan on the east coast as its administrative centre. Most villages sit on the coast; the interior plateau holds scattered hamlets, walled compounds and fields of maize, cassava and peanuts worked with little water. Rainwater cisterns and tankers matter here in a way they do not on the mainland, and the dry season can be genuinely short of water.

The economy has tilted sharply towards tourism in little more than a decade. Guesthouses, cafés, dive shops, scooter rental and driving for day-trippers now support many households, and the seaweed plots that once filled the shallows off Lembongan and Ceningan have shrunk as families moved into the visitor trade. Fishing, farming and work abroad still matter, and remittances remain part of many household budgets.

The day starts before dawn with offerings, the market at Sampalan and boats leaving for the crossing. Traffic peaks in the middle of the day, when tour convoys reach the viewpoints, and the roads are quiet again by evening. Growth has brought strain: waste collection, water supply, electricity and the condition of the cliff-edge roads are constant local issues, and the balance between visitor numbers and a small island's capacity is openly debated.

Food on Nusa Penida is straightforward island cooking, closer to a village warung than to a Seminyak restaurant. Nasi campur — rice with a few spoonfuls of vegetables, tempeh, peanuts, sambal and a piece of chicken or fish — is the everyday plate, sold from mid-morning in glass-fronted cabinets. Nasi goreng and mie goreng, fried rice and noodles, appear on every menu, and grilled fish with sambal matah, the raw Balinese relish of sliced shallot, lemongrass, chilli and lime, is the treat when the boats have come in.

Because the island is dry, maize and cassava have long been staples rather than rice: nasi jagung, rice mixed or replaced with ground maize, is traditional country food here, and cassava is boiled, fried into crisps or dried. Balinese ceremonial dishes — lawar, sate lilit wrapped around lemongrass, babi guling for a feast — are made for temple occasions rather than sold daily, though pork sate turns up at roadside stalls in Hindu villages.

The visitor side of the food scene is a thin layer over that: smoothie bowls, banana pancakes, wood-fired pizza and espresso in the cafés behind Toyapakeh, Ped and Crystal Bay, mostly attached to dive shops and hotels. Young coconuts, fresh juices and kopi Bali, coarse coffee grounds brewed in the glass, are the standard drinks; as elsewhere in Indonesia, home-distilled arak should be avoided.