Indonesia - Step 7.3: Uluwatu vibes and going to the small, quiet island Gili Air 🌴

Uluwatu turned out to offer us nice mornings, having breakfast together with the girls, taking chill days strolling around, going to the beach, finding more nice coffee-spots, doing full-moon ceremonies, watching a traditional firedance, going to a beachclub and ending with dinner together.

Day 1 Gili Air

After four days sharing a room together with the yogi-girls, we went to the Island Gili Air.

Meaning: waking up at 7am to take a 2h grab drive to the harbour in Pidang Bai. After a lot of negotiating, chaos, sun, sweat, confusion and patience: we made it on the ferry. It takes three stops: Gili T, Gili Air, Lombok and then back to Bali. Our stop was the tiny Island Gili Air, which is known to be more tranquil then Gili T which is more for party people. After my 3 days in Canggu, I was done with party for a while.

I was happy to take this trip not alone, but with my favourite dutchie-girl from the ytt. So we were sitting there 1,5h in the overcrowded boat and checking our spotify-wrapped-2023.

Arriving on the small island, we were happy to realise, that it is indeed very calm. This is caused by the fact, that there are no cars or scooter on this island. You can reach everything by walking, bicycle or (and that was a negative surprise on this island); carriages with ponys to pull lazy tourists over the island in 35 degrees heat. 😤

With that said I can quote my friend “it seems like we are going back in time on this island”.

Besides this, so far I can not complain about Gili Air. After coming down from the boat, we took a 11min-sweaty-walk to our Yoga & Meditation Hostel, in which we share a double room. The hostel has 2 yoga shalas a pool and offers daily yoga. The first thing in our mind after a 5hour travel was having some food. When you walk around on small cute streets here, there are a lot of cute cafes and restaurants - which is one of my biggest life-pleasures.

So a little walk later, we sat down in a cute garden of a coffee-place, having a small breakfast cappuccino with oatmilk and a stray cat on my lap. What more to ask in life?

We explored a bit by taking a walk on the long east side of the island. We found a lot of empty pools, abandoned accommodations and in general not a lot of people. To my personal luck also a lot of cats. 🥹

The walk somehow took our life-energy away so we slowly returned to the hostel, to get a shower and chill at the pool area with some snacks. The whole afternoon we could already hear a thunder, but it just rained a bit in the end.

I looked for a dinner place on google and as we made our way to that place, we witnessed the most amazing sunset, between the palm trees, with the sky changing colours every few minutes from deep violet to pink to yellow and fire-orange. We couldn't get enough footage of that moment and had a really nice moment there - enjoying the beauty of nature and life.

Arriving at the “restaurant” named “dharma kitchen”, we found out, it is more or less a small room with sitting options and a fresh cooked vegan buffet. So no menu, bar or waitresses. You take what you want from the buffet, clean your dishes afterwards and contribute the amount of money you want to in a donation jar. The food was amazing and we really liked the concept.

To end the day we took another walk to the beach and sat down in a cosy area in a empty bar at the beach. Drinking a glass of wine, talking about life and also with the staff there - they told us now is really low season and thats why it is so empty. In July-August the whole island will be filled with tourists, so we are more lucky to experience such a quiet time.

Day 2 Gili Air

Today is day 2. on this paradise-y island, which we started with a vinyasa class and vegan pancakes. Now I am sitting by the pool, organising things and also writing this post. I was inspired by my dutchie friend, that she more or less documents her travels daily - to do the same or at least every few days. Not sure if every time I will do so or also publish these entries.

Today more of our yoga-girl-group will join us here in Gili Air and we are looking forward to do things together.

As I couldn't upload this for hours because of bad connection so we already did some things.

One of the girlies arrived and we went together to get lunch, walking there through the rain. A activity we all enjoy is going from one café/restaurant to the next so after that we had coffee in Juju which is an entirely vegan place. As it was still raining we decided it's a good idea to all get a small tattoo with traditional bamboo technique. So we are united now with the 🕉️ tattoo. Walking through the streets after that we ran into the rest of the girls that just arrived and ended the evening going to an Italian place, bringing white wine from a outside store, because they said we should do that as they didn't had wine. The food was amazing and thats how we ended this beautiful day 🍕 🍷

See ya soon. 💕