East Bali Retreats: Getaways for the Overworked, Undernourished and Partied Out

In the Karangasem district of eastern Bali - about as close as you can get to the “real Bali,” that mythical place only backpackers seem to know about - the more east you travel, the more austere the spiritual centers become.
 
Tirta Sari (tel. 0366-24330), (also known as Sacred Mountain Sanctuary) below the lyrically rustic country town of Sideman in the foothills of Gunung Agung, is a riverfront resort totally hemmed in by stepped ricefields and cultivated hills. Temple complexes are visible atop sacred mountains at every point of the compass. The only sounds and smells experienced on the nearly four hectares of grounds are those of nature – the Unda River rushing below, birds warbling overhead, the buzz and zing of insects, the wind in the trees and water coursing through channels and over rocks. A place of tranquility and reflection.
 
This is one of Bali’s most unspoiled regions, a hilly agrarian enclave of rice and salak-growing with no industry except of the low-tech cottage varieties - the traditional weaving of songket and ikat. A number of upmarket hotels – The Four Seasons, The Ritz Carlton, Pita Maha - organize bicycle tours on the empty winding country roads of the area, the most untrafficked in all of Bali.
 
The honking crowded beaches and high-decimal hedonistic pleasures of the southern part of the island seem a million light years away – replaced, as it were, by the gentle clacking of weaving looms, the waddle of ducks and the soft tread of the farmer carrying hay.
 
Tirta Sari’s villas, made completely of bamboo with foundations of river stones, are sturdy and yet have a light, playhouse feel. They seem to breathe, and the floors give when you walk. This is perhaps the largest bamboo buildings project in all of Indonesia, if not in all of South East Asia. The detail work evident in the construction must have been excruciatingly labor intensive. “The bamboo   windows were a bitch to make,” Emerald confessed. I counted twelve glass windows in my villa, the panes mounted painstakingly in notches cut in frames made of bamboo tubes.

It took not a little acclimating to experiencing the modern equivalent of Buddha’s Fast in the Wilderness. Each morning I woke to see birds wheeling in the sky out the second storey balcony. After my initial uneasiness with all the unfamiliar sights, smells and sounds - so far from the corrosive din of civilization - I soon found it all too easy to revert to an original state, as if residing in the first valley Homo sapiens ever occupied.
 
Service in the hotel’s restaurant is mellow, in tune with the relaxed surroundings, and the staff routinely and happily entertained our baby girl so that we could savor more enjoyably the delicate flavors of the hotel’s Thai cuisine. The light and healthful food was first class – nay, it was gourmet quality. We were in the best of two worlds.
 
The 75-meter-long infinity-edged swimming pool is one of the largest and longest on Bali, replenished constantly with natural spring water. The garden, inspired by Emerald’s partner Ken Ballard, features such exotics as Cempaka, fern trees, torch gingers, heavenly banana (pisang sorga), princess and fan palms. Bougainvilleas spill over stone walls.
 
Groups practicing or learning yoga, meditation, massage, dance, gamelan, or the making of Balinese offerings (canang) make up the majority of the guests who use either the big circular conference hall or the open-air restaurant. It would be difficult to imagine a more sensational, ecologically correct, and fanciful conference venue as the Tirta Sari.
 
From Sideman, we headed east on the main road, then turned south down towards the river. As the bangko ricefield bird flies, the Nirata Centre of Living Awareness (tel. 0366-24122) lies only 1.5 kilometers downstream from the Tirta Sari.    Walking through the property, I happened upon the tousled-haired Peter Wrycza as he and his architect were putting the finishing touches on a new meditation center, or “centre” as this British psychiatrist would have it.
 
While the Tirta Sari people are prone to near ecstatic rationale behind how harmoniously their property blends into the land, this English sage with magnetic gaze seemed to be preoccupied with how supernatural events touch each of our lives. The author of a successful self-help guide, “Living  Awareness,” about the psychology of consciousness, Peter knows from which he speaks. From the start, he was a source of never-ending stories about why and how his retreat had been inspired and built.
 
People come to Nirata not only to refresh themselves but to expand awareness. Buddhist groups arrive to meditate in sublime surroundings, and the retreat also hosts transformational workshops sponsored by the University of Vermont. The center attracts mostly Europeans and          Americans who want to connect with the Balinese and their culture. Groups are deliberately kept under 25 in number. The Tabola Inn, just 10 minute’s walk down the road, takes the spillover.
 
While the Tirta Sari is more of a commercial venture with the emphasis on luxury, facilities and services, Nirata has more of a sense that you’re living with family.  With its stone foundations, wooden floors, tile terraces, Nirata’s buildings are more permanent and conventional than the elegant bamboo structures of Tirta Sari. In a word, Tirta Sari is a hotel which functions also as a retreat, while Nirata is a retreat which functions also as a hotel, or rather a pondok wisata (guesthouse).
 
Nirata follows a philosophy that’s a synthesis of late 20th century thinking (Gregory Bateson, Korspiski, Levi Strauss, Francisco Verela, etc.) and eastern spiritual teachings. To attain higher awareness, they practice meditation in which the staff joins the guests. Peter summed it up: “Our way is a bridge between East and West and also between different eastern philosophies such as Hinduism and Buddhism.”
 
E-mail : pakbill2003@yahoo.com
 
Copyright@2004 PakBill
 
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