The Hippy Trail Never Really Went Away
There's a particular kind of traveller who shows up in Bali with a dog-eared copy of "The Celestial Prophecy," a sarong in their daypack, and the vague notion that the island will sort out their entire life. I was, regrettably, that traveller. I'd spent three years in a London marketing job slowly turning into a stress-hive, and I'd convinced myself that two weeks in Southeast Asia would fix everything. (Spoiler: it would take four times that long, and the fix wasn't what I expected.)
I landed in Denpasar on a Tuesday, took a minibus to Ubud at 6 a.m., checked into a homestay run by a woman named Ketut who served me bitter coffee and a knowing smile, and decided I would spend my time "really understanding the culture," which is traveller-speak for "I'm going to feel smug about being different from other tourists."
The universe, as it turns out, has a sense of humour.
The Accidental Education Begins
By day three, I'd already abandoned the guidebook. Not dramatically—more like the way you abandon a diet, gradually and without ceremony. I'd met Sasha, a woman from Moscow who was allegedly "healing her chakras" but was mostly interested in late-night nasi goreng and complaining about her ex-husband. We became immediate friends.
Sasha had a contact—everyone in Ubud has a contact—who could arrange private tours of the various temples and rice terraces. I was initially sceptical of the private tour thing (too bougie, too separate from "real" experience), but Sasha had already booked the Private Ubud Sightseeing Tour Private Ubud Sightseeing Tour before I could protest. Eight hours, private air-conditioned vehicle, the works.
I showed up the morning of the tour with the attitude of someone attending an obligation. I left it changed, which is mortifying to admit but also true.
Our guide was named Gede, and he was the antithesis of the bright-eyed tour guide stereotype. He was fiftyish, gravelly-voiced, and seemed faintly amused by his job. When Sasha asked him about the spiritual significance of the temples, he lit a cigarette and said, "You know what it means? It means my family has been here for five hundred years and we like to have nice buildings." I immediately loved him.
The rice terraces at Tegalalang were indeed stunning—that photograph everyone's seen, where you're standing in geometric green infinity. But Gede took us to a smaller terrace afterward, where it was just us and an old farmer and a dog with three legs. He explained how the irrigation system had been operating in the same way for a thousand years, and something about the combination of scale and intimate persistence just unlocked something in my chest.
Tirta Empul happened next—the temple springs, carved into the earth with pools of holy water. Tourists were dunking themselves in it like it was a baptism theme park. Gede sat on a bench with us instead, drank coffee, and didn't try to impress us with facts. That felt revolutionary.
The Unravelling (In The Good Way)
After that day, my carefully constructed travel itinerary went into a drawer and never came out. Sasha and I fell into the particular rhythm of long-term wanderers: we'd have breakfast at the same warung every morning, we'd walk without destination, we'd sit in rice fields and read novels, we'd argue about meditation (I was anti, she was evangelical).
About two weeks in, we decided we needed to do something that felt properly touristy, as a kind of joke on ourselves. We booked the Premium All Inclusive Nusa Penida Full Day Tour from Bali Premium All Inclusive Nusa Penida Full Day Tour from Bali on a whim, partly because Sasha wanted to see manta rays and partly because we were bored.
I'd been to Southeast Asia before, but I'd never seen the ocean floor like that—the way the water went from turquoise to midnight blue in moments, the shape of the reef, the surreal sight of manta rays moving through it like they were defying physics. The group was small enough that you could actually breathe, and the snorkelling crew didn't try to turn it into a performance.
Somewhere between Nusa Penida and Lembongan, while floating above coral I'll never be able to describe adequately, I realised I'd stopped thinking about my job. Not because I was trying to leave it behind—I was just genuinely, completely elsewhere. The thought felt the way cold water feels after you've been in the sun too long.
The Temple at Sunset
On our last week in Bali, we were properly broke—the kind of broke where you eat instant noodles for lunch to justify a nice dinner. Sasha suggested we splurge on one "experience," and we chose the Private Uluwatu Sunset Tour with Kecak Dance and Dinner Private Uluwatu Sunset Tour with Kecak Dance and Dinner, partly because it seemed appropriately indulgent for a goodbye, and partly because neither of us had seen the Kecak dance and we were curious.
Turns out, the Kecak dance is absolutely mad—a hundred men sitting in concentric circles, chanting and making sounds like machinery, telling the Ramayana with their voices and fire and pure collective insanity. The sun dropped into the Indian Ocean like it was on a timer, and the temple turned gold, and I cried like an idiot next to Sasha, who was also crying, and we didn't talk about it afterward because we didn't need to.
The Comedown and The Realisation
I spent my final three days in Ubud doing absolutely nothing of significance. I got a Body Massage Experience in Ubud Traditional Spa Body Massage Experience in Ubud Traditional Spa, where a woman named Nyoman worked on my shoulders for seventy-five minutes while I sweated out anxiety I didn't know I was holding. I sat in rice fields. I drank a lot of tea.
On the flight back to London, I thought about how I'd come to Bali to "find myself," which is such a ridiculous thing to want and also, I think, kind of honest. What actually happened was I stopped looking. I got distracted by rice terraces and strange old guides and Sasha's ongoing spiritual crisis and the particular way the light hits Ubud in late afternoon. The self-discovery was incidental—just what happens when you stop performing the role of the person you think you should be.
I quit the marketing job four months later. I didn't move to Bali or join an ashram or any of the things I briefly considered. I became a travel writer instead, which is basically just an excuse to stay lost and call it research. Sasha got her chakras sorted out (or so she claims) and opened a yoga studio in Moscow. We still message about noodle spots.
The hippy trail never really closed. It just evolved. And if you pay attention—if you let yourself be bored enough and broke enough and lost enough—you might stumble into your own version of it.
