Ulan Danu Bratan Temple aka Temple in the Mist

We went to Lovina from Ubud by bus. It’s a day’s drive. Apparently previous tourists had complained about being cramped in a bus for hours on end.

On one hand I’m used to road trips in which you might spend up to eighteen hours with stops only long enough to refill the gas tank and hit the bathroom. To me, this wasn’t even a real full day’s travel.

On the other hand I find I am less able to sit around as I get older. Inertia messes with a life just as much as it does with physics. A body that doesn’t get up and boogie every so often will eventually find it can no longer boogie at all. I don’t mind more time off the bus walking around.

The touring company’s response was to find a couple of stops along the way where we could wander around. Ulan Danu Bratan Temple is one such spot.

The temple was built in the 1600’s. Most of the buildings are still in their original forms. They are associated with a legend about a bad son of the chief who separated Bali and Java.

The grounds are fairly extensive. After walking up to the first gate – the really tall one – we paused while the tour guides explained that since this was a holy place, women on their periods could not pass through that point.

Not an issue for us old folks. We all haply climbed the steps, over the two-stride long threshold, and down the steps into the compound.

Ulan Danu is at a fairly high elevation. By the time we reached it, the ever-present clouds had thickened into a dense fog. The entire time we were there was all misty and moody. I’ve played video games with a similar feel.

There’s supposed to be a large and impressive pagoda on the grounds. I never got a good look at it. Why is it that all the really big and impressive things in Indonesia hide in ash and fog? You’d think volcanoes and huge pagodas would be things you can’t miss.

Okay, maybe not all. Check out their penjor.

This place has a little bit of everything. We passed a sacred tree. You can tell by the skirt wrapped around it and the place for offerings.

The Hindu seem to worship a lot of natural stuff, though they aren’t particularly nature worshipers. For instance a lot of trees – particularly old ones like this – will have skirts around them. The skirts mean it’s a good place to leave an offering. It’s traditional to make an offering at the tree before going in to the main temple.

You’ve already seen the importance given to boundary lines of various types. Gates with no bars across that represent the transition from the mundane to the holy are all over the place.

Not only were there big ones at the main entrance, there were various demarcations throughout. Here we can see over the wall the roofs of the kind of shrines most families have in their yards. I don’t know which deities these represent. We waltz right past.

This one lead to one of the main points of interest in the temple grounds – a sacred island bearing a sacred bamboo grove.

Sacrifices of chickens and ducks are thrown into the water here. Other people will often wait in the lake to catch the sacrifices.

Well, sometimes it’s an island. I guess right then the water was low.

Like many places in Bali, the outside walls of various spots had statues depicting deities. These were a little different because they had been painted.

The problem with paint is that it has to be refreshed. Since it’s on a holy object, it isn’t like you can just go out with a can of spray paint and do a quick touch up. Or maybe you can. I didn’t ask.

The painted woman is actually a stand holding water for use in purification before entering the temple.

The statues representing evil are considered evil themselves while they work to keep evil out. The idea is that you cant always avoid evil. Oddly enough, they often have large breasts regardless of gender.

We looped around the side and hit the shops near the parking lot. Just like the rest of the temple, they shops were shrouded in mist. Somehow it had a different feel.

Still, I made a good effort to find tree bark for brewing Indonesian tea. I found a fair amount of food, but most of it was stuff I couldn’t identify.