The original Balinese... 300 inhabitants, no marriage outside the village, strict rules apply... Welcome to Tenganan
Now this is an interesting piece of anthropology – the Bali Aga call themselves the original Balinese, and they have kept traditional customs from before the Javanese influence. They do not burn their dead and their hierarchy is not based on a caste system. There are a few hundreds of Bali Aga communities living in the mountains of the north and east of Bali but the ones from the Tenganan village, have known how best to sell themselves:
If you happen to be a woman from there and marry outside the village and follows him, the village looses the land she inherited. She is banned from the village and can not return even if she divorces or becomes a widow!
There are about 300 households only so you don’t have much choice inside the village... (think again when you complain you can’t find a boyfriend in Paris or London!) Plus the women’s fertility levels have declined and some hereditary problems have been found in children.
Tourism has allowed these villagers to save the ancient weaving technique of the double Ikat where the you dye the bunch of threads first with different colours and when the women weave them, it makes perfectly symmetrical patterns! How they do it, I don’t know but it is truly an art! Toni Tack, an amazing woman who has lived in Bali on and off since the 70s and who came to give us a talk on Bali and the islands east of it at the Longhouse (one of the activities available for those staying there), told us that studies showed that the Tenganan villagers blood types were tested and it was found they had the same type as the Gujratis and a group of Japanese, who all have in common the technique of the double Ikat weaving!
Of course I had to get one as they are quite nice and I like the ‘primitive’ style they have, and bought it with even more enthusiasm from the most beautiful old lady had seen... She was still so beautiful and clear-eyed but had long plaited white hair, and so graceful and apparently had 20/20 eyesight as she wove that Ikat without any glasses! (photo lovely old lady)
The other cool things to find there are painted egg shells. They are left to dry on a cactus which makes for strange decorations in the garden!
Pink or yellow cocks! For cock-fighting, still tolerated for ceremonies, you want to make sure you can tell which one is the one you betted on so when they are both white, this is what happens... (photo of pink cock!)
Whole scrolls with the whole Mahayana and Mahabarata stories engraved on Lontar (Palm) leaf – the husband of our lovely old lady showed us how he makes it.
Thinly woven baskets, boxes, place mats, pen holders etc from Ata leaves... (photo of old man reading scriptures on palm Lontar scrolls)
An interesting trip for sure but leaves you wondering what the future of these people is going to look like...
Karangasem Palace in Amlapura – We stopped off to visit what was once the head of the Karangasem Kingdom and met one of the King’s descendants who told us in perfect English that he has a house in Canada. I took a picture of one of the old photos of the Colonial Dutch and some Indonesians which I thought was intriguing.
On Valentine’s day – visited 2 temples – one of which had cool bats hanging upside down in the cave, covering the floor in Guano, and monkeys cheekily waiting to grab the food and goodies people were bringing as offerings! And a bunch of seriously over-zealous bracelet vendors outside the temple who pounced on us and made us want to run for the car... I mean seriously aggressive! We never found the second temple but instead visited a glamorous hotel - Di Mare - which may as well have been on the cliffs of Capri! I think that was the idea. There was even a cool cable car/lift thing to get to bottom of the cliff where we had a drink on the tiny beach and where I underestimated the waves, and came back with my trousers drenched to my underwear, thinking I’d just dip my toes in... Very classy.
Blessed the house again! This time in the Goa Gong temple just up the road where you can usually only attend a ceremony during full moon, and foreigners not allowed in, but this time we were the ones asking for the Longhouse to be blessed, so we did the whole ceremony in style! We even had bits of the original story of the monk who travelled from Java to look for a holy place and found this cave. Toni Tack again – and when we showed we knew something about the history of the temple, the priest himself asked us if we could help him by sending him written info about it! Inside there are stalagmites and stalagtites and one joining up which if you hit, sounds like a Gong inside the cave... apparently only special people can hear it also from outside the cave. Another cool thing about it is that it is for the 4 religions: There was a side for the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists and the Hindus in this temple! Typical Bali, so accepting! We did this ceremony with all the staff from the Longhouse and they were so proud to be able to do it.
The beautiful view from the Longhouse...
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