Senggigi

Senggigi was a stretch of fishing villages and coconut groves on a coast that had seen far more history than it showed. West Lombok was ruled from Bali for much of the 18th and 19th centuries, after Balinese princes from Karangasem took the island, and the Balinese Hindu temples along this shore — Batu Bolong on its rock above the sea among them — date from that period. Sasak resistance and a Dutch intervention ended Balinese rule in 1894, when the Netherlands took Lombok by force, and the island passed to Indonesia after independence.

The resort grew as Indonesia began to promote Lombok as a quieter alternative to Bali, and a building frenzy along the bays in the late 1990s, when the island was talked of as the next Bali, gave it most of its hotels. The coast road was improved, and Senggigi became the island's first and for a long time its only tourist centre, serving package visitors, divers and travellers heading for the Gili islands. The strip acquired restaurants, bars and a small nightlife, and the art market sold pottery and weaving from villages inland.

Its fortunes have swung hard since. The Asian financial crisis, communal violence around Ampenan and southern Senggigi in January 2000, and the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 each cut visitor numbers sharply, and the rise of the Gili islands and of Kuta in the south drew away much of the trade that remained. In August 2018 a series of earthquakes centred on northern Lombok killed hundreds on the island and damaged buildings along this coast; rebuilding was under way when the Covid-19 pandemic closed Indonesia's borders. The strip today is smaller and quieter than it was at its peak, and works mainly as a base for the wider island.

The people of Lombok are predominantly Sasak and Muslim, and the island is sometimes called the island of a thousand mosques for the number of minarets along its roads. Senggigi is one of the places where that identity meets a long-established Balinese Hindu minority: temple offerings are laid on the rocks at Batu Bolong, Balinese ceremonies process along the coast road, and Sasak and Balinese communities live side by side in the villages between the hotels.

That coexistence has its own rituals. At Lingsar, inland to the south-east, a temple complex built by the Balinese in 1714 serves both Sasak and Balinese worshippers, and the Perang Topat, in which the two communities pelt each other with packets of rice after a shared ceremony, is the best-known expression of it. Sasak traditions run deeper inland, where villages such as Sade keep thatched rice barns and hand-weaving, and where older blended practices survive in the north.

Everyday manners are those of a conservative Muslim island with a long habit of hospitality. Modest dress away from the beach matters here more than it does in Bali; alcohol is served in the tourist restaurants but not generally elsewhere; and the fasting month reshapes opening hours and mealtimes across the strip. Sasak crafts — ikat and songket weaving, coiled basketry, and the red clay pottery of Banyumulek — are sold in the art market and made in villages within an hour's drive.

Senggigi is a village-sized place, a few thousand residents strung along the coast road within West Lombok Regency, whose population runs to several hundred thousand; the provincial capital Mataram, with roughly 450,000 people, is half an hour to the south and supplies its hospitals, offices and markets. Most households here live from tourism or fishing, and many workers commute in from villages inland and along the coast.

The tourism economy has never fully recovered from the shocks of the past two decades, and the difference is visible: refurbished resorts on the northern bays stand near closed hotels and empty shopfronts on the strip. Fishing continues from the beaches, with outriggers drawn up between hotel frontages and boats going out at night; coconut, banana and cashew are grown on the slopes behind, and Mataram provides government and service jobs.

Days begin with the pre-dawn call to prayer and boats returning with the catch, and end with the whole coast facing west for the sunset, when the strip's restaurants fill. Traffic on the coast road is constant but light by Bali standards. Water supply, waste and the condition of the road north are persistent local issues, along with the slow business of earthquake rebuilding and the question of how much of Lombok's growing tourism — now concentrated in the south around Kuta and the Mandalika circuit — will return to this coast.

Lombok's cooking is the hottest in the region. Ayam taliwang is the dish to know: a young chicken, split, grilled and basted with a paste of dried chilli, garlic, shrimp paste and palm sugar, named after Karang Taliwang in Mataram and served almost everywhere on the island. It comes with plecing kangkung, blanched water spinach served cold with a sambal of chilli, shallot, garlic and shrimp paste, topped with bean sprouts, grated coconut and fried peanuts.

Sate is the other staple. Sate bulayak, small beef skewers served with bulayak, rice cake wrapped in a spiral of palm leaf, comes with a hot, soupy sauce; sate pusut is minced meat or fish mixed with grated coconut and spices and wrapped around lemongrass stalks; and sate rembiga is another Lombok beef satay. Nasi balap puyung, rice with shredded chilli chicken, dried soy beans and squid, is sold in warungs and packed for travellers.

On the coast, the food is simpler: fish grilled over coconut husk with lime and sambal, squid, prawns and whatever the boats brought in, sold from beach grills and restaurant ice counters. Tourist menus add pizza, burgers and banana pancakes. Drinks are coconut water, fresh juices, and kopi Lombok served black and sweet; alcohol is available in the resort restaurants, but home-distilled spirits should be avoided anywhere in Indonesia.