Uluwatu

The Bukit Peninsula was for centuries the least useful part of Bali: a raised block of limestone with thin soil, no rivers and no irrigated rice, where villages lived from dry crops, cattle, lime burning and fishing. Its importance was religious. Pura Luhur Uluwatu, on the cliff at the south-western tip, is one of the island's sad kahyangan, the group of temples regarded as spiritual pillars of Bali. Tradition connects it with the 11th-century Javanese priest Mpu Kuturan and, later, with Dang Hyang Nirartha, the 16th-century sage credited with founding or refounding several of the sea temples and said to have attained his release from the world at this spot.

The modern reputation of the place dates from the early 1970s, when surfers were filmed riding the long left-hand wave below the cliffs for Morning of the Earth, released in 1972, which spread the name worldwide. Through the 1970s and 1980s surfers reached the break down a footpath and through the cave at Suluban, staying in simple rooms at Pecatu. Development stayed slow because water had to be trucked in and the roads were poor.

That changed from the 1990s, when resorts appeared on the clifftops and the road network improved, and accelerated after 2010 as southern Bali filled up: villas, hotels and beach clubs spread across the Bukit, and the Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue was completed nearby in 2018. The temple itself remains in active use. Water supply, access roads and cliff erosion are the constant local concerns.

Uluwatu's identity rests on the temple and on surfing, an unlikely pairing that works because the two occupy different parts of the same cliff. The temple's evening kecak performance is the best-known cultural event in southern Bali: a circle of men chanting the interlocking chak rhythm without instruments, accompanying an episode from the Ramayana, staged in an open amphitheatre with the sea behind. The form was developed in the 1930s from a trance ritual, partly in collaboration with the German artist Walter Spies, and has been performed for audiences ever since.

The villages of Pecatu and Ungasan keep the ordinary Balinese calendar: banjar councils, temple anniversaries every 210 days, penjor poles for Galungan, processions to the sea before Nyepi, and cremation ceremonies that close the roads. Many families who farmed dry land now work in hotels, drive, run warungs or rent rooms, but customary obligations continue and take priority over work.

The surf culture is international and long-established, with several generations of Balinese professional surfers alongside visitors from Australia, Brazil, Europe and Japan. Rules in the water are informal but real, and crowding at the main break is a frequent complaint. The macaques around the temple are notorious for stealing glasses and phones, sometimes returning them for food, and staff will warn visitors before they enter. Provincial authorities have publicised expectations for visitors after incidents at sacred sites, and behaviour at the temple is watched.

Uluwatu is not a town but a name covering the temple headland and the villages around it, mostly within Pecatu and Ungasan in South Kuta district. Together these villages hold a few tens of thousands of residents, and their population has grown quickly as workers have moved to the peninsula for construction and hospitality jobs. Outside the resorts the settlements are ordinary Balinese villages of walled family compounds, temples, schools and shops.

Almost all work is now tourism: clifftop hotels and villas, restaurants, surf schools, board repair, transport, security and construction, alongside quarrying of the peninsula's limestone for building stone. Some families keep cattle and grow cassava and maize on the dry ground. Water is the persistent constraint, trucked or piped in and expensive, and the growth of villas with pools has made supply a political issue.

The daily rhythm follows the swell and the sun. Surfers and staff are on the road before six, the middle of the day is hot and quiet on the exposed plateau, and everything converges on the cliffs in the late afternoon: temple visitors for the performance, drinkers for the sunset, and the traffic jam that follows on the narrow roads out. Balinese households keep their own earlier timetable of offerings and ceremonies.

Eating at Uluwatu divides between the clifftop and the villages. The cliff cafés and beach clubs serve international menus — grilled fish, burgers, poke bowls, pizza and cocktails — at prices reflecting the view. A few hundred metres inland, warungs on the Pecatu and Ungasan roads serve the food residents eat: nasi campur, a plate of rice with small portions of vegetables in coconut, satay, tempeh and sambal; nasi goreng and mie goreng; gado-gado in peanut dressing; and soto ayam.

Balinese specialities are the reason to eat inland. Babi guling, suckling pig turned on a spit and rubbed with base genep, the island's spice paste of shallot, garlic, galangal, turmeric, ginger and chilli, is sold by the plate at midday. Ayam and bebek betutu are poultry stuffed with spice paste, wrapped in leaves and cooked slowly. Sate lilit, minced fish or pork pressed onto lemongrass sticks, suits a coast where fish is landed daily, and sambal matah of raw shallot, lemongrass, chilli and lime comes alongside.

Seafood is best taken at Jimbaran on the bay to the north, where stalls and restaurants grill the catch over coconut husks in the evening. Fruit stalls sell snakefruit, mangosteen and young coconut, and the Bukit's dry ground yields maize and cassava rather than rice. Drinks run from Bintang beer and coconut water to Kintamani coffee, and to arak, the local palm or rice spirit, which should be treated with caution because of repeated methanol poisonings from illicit batches.