Wanderlust

It was kind of embarrassing really. In the humid Indonesian heat, my tiny backpack and I were struggling to climb the hill, while the people passing us were balancing baskets filled with sweets and rice on their head. Several men carried huge packages together – when some of the plastic coverings fell off, I was startled to see the face and snout of a full-grown pig. Wearing anti-slip trainers and sturdy jeans, I slipped twice over the sandy road; the women skipped over the path. On the hilltop where the festivities would take place, my face and body itched from the sweat and sand, but the villagers seemed unaffected.

The village of Sudaji, located in northern Bali, climb the holy hill in June every year to show their gratefulness to their Gods. We were invited by the family of our guesthouse to spend the night up the hill. A substitute village was created on the hill, small tents of plastics and shrubbery. Between these improvised houses the villagers were loudly playing board games; others were bringing their sacrifices – amongst others, the pigs – to temple to set up for the ceremony.

We were ten people in a tiny tent, spooning on the hard ground. If someone wanted to turn to relief his or her sore side, they would call, ‘TURN!’ and everyone, crankily laughing, would turn to their other side at the same time.

Around 4 o’clock in the morning we joined the ceremonies. It was noisy around the small temple; children, parents, elderly were chatting, praying, laughing, or watching the ceremony between the food for their Gods. The holy experience on the hill had brought some devotees in trance; just as we came, an elderly woman was marching up and down along the crowds, at times stopping to hold her walking stick as a gun, perhaps warning the people who had ran bullets through the temple’s image of Shiva. The power that seemed to run through her wrinkled and tawny body intimidated me, but the villagers weren’t impressed; others had spit fire and walked over coals earlier that evening.

The ceremony ended with the traditional holy water splattering and giving out the new rice of the year to stick to our foreheads and behind our ears. The cool water woke me up so I could stay until the sun coloured the sky and the temple again.

The next morning, we walked along the tents that had become shrubberies again to descend the hill with the rest of the village. I fell only once; the villagers helped me. The pigs, some partly eaten, went down with us.