Standing by the side of the Abang to Amlapura road, the supersaturated green of rice terraces in the Tukad Balunggah valley is a balm to eyes recently blasted by dust and grit from passing trucks.

The mountain roads of eastern Bali are a joy on a motorbike - unlike the roadworks-ridden Professor Doctor Ida Bagus Mantra Bypass. The highway that brought us east from Denpasar to Candidasa should have been a high speed run along the coast. Instead the roadworks and attendant convoys of trucks had made the bypass feel even longer than its name. It took three hours, but it was worth it: The scenic splendour and jungled tunnels of this sinuous ribbon of asphalt between Amplapura and Abang is something else entirely...

Riding a bike is by far the best way to get around on the island. Part of it is being able to cruise past long lines of idling cars and trucks, completing a journey through snarled traffic in less than half the time it would take in any four-wheeled vehicle. But the best of it is being exposed to the surfeit of scents and sounds carried on the moist tropical air. It's a wonder anyone wants to own a car given the advantages we see in riding a bike, but then we haven't experienced a wet season yet, so maybe that opinion will change!

We're heading for the Amed coast for a weekend of snorkelling and a low-key celebration of our birthdays. It's a long ride on a well loaded bike, but we've already decided to take an even longer route home to avoid the bypass and hopefully find more roads like this one.

It's been forever, but we've finally completed our sentence in the sky cell.

"When will come that time that I will have my happiness?
It will be when the clock chimes that hour: when my country has lived up to its ideals.
For now I am blessed within my family whom I love."

Or something like that...¹

The message is etched in a pitted window pane, in a bare room where dust motes drift in watery sunlight. The thinning panes of the window distort the view of a long-dry fountain outside, beyond which lies a ruined pier that would have so often been the focus of attention of the message's author, a former controleur in the Dutch colonial administration of the Banda Islands.

These former offices, an adjacent mansion and the walled garden in between form the Istana Mini or Little Palace, the island group's administrative center during the years prior to, and for a while after, Indonesia's independence. Built in the early 1820s, the imported glazed stone tiles of the floors, the wide collonaded verandahs and decorated high timber ceilings hint at former grandeur, but near total emptiness, the thick patina of dust on the scored floor tiles and the creeping mould that forces the paint from the walls create a despondent, abandoned air today.

Desert, Deer and Dragons

          Udabno's Church of the Annunciation           Lavra Monastery's upper yard and grottoes           Asomtavruli script and bullet hole above Lavra Monastery entrance           Fields behind the Lavra Monastery           Interior of Udabno's refectory with tables and last supper fresco           Udabno refectory front view           Udabno's main church (damaged deer fresco at mid right)           Udabno's Church of St George           Udabno's Church of the Martyrs, Azerbaijani border post visible at middle left distance           Door to the spring of Father David's Tears behind Lavra Monastery Udabno's Church of the Annunciation

Clinging to the remaining rock wall in the shattered cliff-top room, a dusty, defaced fresco depicted a haloed bloke reaching between a deer's legs. There had to be a story...