Bali, Indonesia

BALI, INDONESIA | "Pulau Dewata — Island of the Gods"

Bali is the most spiritually alive island in the world — a 5,780 square kilometer Hindu enclave within the world's largest Muslim-majority country, where the Balinese Hindu religion permeates every aspect of daily life from the small palm leaf offerings (canang sari) placed on every threshold every morning to the cremation ceremonies, temple festivals, and rice paddy rituals that structure the calendar around a cosmological framework that has remained essentially unchanged for a thousand years. The island's extraordinary landscape — the volcanic peak of Gunung Agung (3,142 m) rising above the terraced rice paddies of Tegalalang and Jatiluwih (a UNESCO Cultural Landscape), the black sand beaches of Lovina, and the coral reefs of Amed — is inseparable from the spiritual geography that the Balinese overlay on every natural feature.

The colors are the specific palette of tropical spirituality: the deep gold of the temple umbrellas (tedung) clustered at a cremation ceremony, the brilliant green of the rice paddies in the morning light before the Balinese day reaches its full heat, the deep grey of the volcanic sand beaches at Candidasa, and the extraordinary warm orange of the sunset over the Indian Ocean at Tanah Lot when the sea temple silhouette and the sky above it become the most photographed composition on the island.