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S U M M ER 2 0 1 5

AWAY magazine

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Authentic Bali In Search of the True Experience

Top Festivals From Around the World

AWAY

magazine

MASTHEAD President and Publisher John R. MacArthur

Editor Whitney Seulke

Executive Editor James Marcus

Managing Editor Robert P. Baird

Deputy Editors Christopher R. Beha Christopher Cox

Senior Editors Emily Cooke Giles Harvey

Art Director Stacey D. Clarkson

Web Editor Joe Kloc

Associate Editor Ryann Liebenthal

Assistant to the Editor Miranda Popkey

Assistant Editors Camille Bromley Matthew Sherrill

Assistant Art Director Sam Finn Cate-Gumpert

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Editorial Interns Jamie Fisher, Henry Knight, Osita Nwanevu, Rachel Poser

Contributing Editors Ben Austen, Kevin Baker, Tom Bissell, Joshua Cohen, Thomas Frank, Nicholas Fraser, Rivka Galchen, William H. Gass, Gary Greenberg

Contributing Artists Olive Ahyens, Lena Herzog, Aaron Huey, Samuel James, Steve Mumford

Vice President and Associate Publisher Peter D. Kendall

Vice President and General Manager Lynn Carlson

Vice President, Circulation Shawn D. Green

Vice President, Public Relations Giulia Melucci

Assistant to the Publisher/Rights and Reprints AWAY Magazine is for the adventurous at heart, the adventure seekers, the extremists and everyone else in-between - that means you.

We have the coolest gadgets to travel with, the hottest places to visit and those hard to find places that give the term “fresh experience� a whole new meaning.

Come on in, we dare you to take a look, take a mini visual vacation, browse those stunning photos, and even book a trip there yourself.

AWAY

magazine

Barbara Andreasson Kim Lau, Senior Accountant Eve Brant, Office Manager Adrian Kneubuhl, Staff

Advertising Sales (212) 420-5720; Fax: (212) 260-1096

Production & Advertising Services Manager Jennifer C. Adams Sales Representatives (Chicago) Tauster Media Resources, Inc. (630) 858-1558; Fax: (630) 858-1510 Sales Representatives (Canada) JMB Media International (450) 538-2468 Fax: (450) 538-5468

letter from the

EDITOR

Let me introduce myself.

My name is Whitney Seulke and I am the editor-inchief of AWAY Magazine. Art has always played a part in my life since an early age. Whether it was through dance, painting, or one of many subscriptions to far too many publications I’ve always craved an outlet for my creative passions. You could say I’ve always had a passion for print. Hence the creation of this magazine that lies before you.

AWAY Magazine is a recently launched publication focusing on travel, whether through the enjoyment of the pictures within or through following the itinerary provided to create your own memories. We strive to create a momentary escape for you dear readers, that is, until you can escape yourself, where ever that may be.

About this issue...

cinespia - hollywood cemetery movie night

Travel, and the enjoyment we derive from the journey and the associated memory, is such a personal thing. What turns one thrill-seeker on will likely scare the hell out of a nature lover. Often with families, one has to seek out a balance that will please everyone – not always an easy task. Luckily for us, this is a country that offers an incredible diversity. While mom is enjoying a luxurious spa treatment, dad could be fishing or hunting and the teenagers hardly ever battle to find something to give them an adrenalin buzz.

Whether you’re headed to the family batch with the kids, or enjoying a romantic sojourn to a tropical island, the longer summer days are there to be enjoyed. I urge you to make it your mission this summer to discover a new twist in the tale of your vacations, to make a memory that you’ll look back on with delight.

My personal advice? Look local. You may have done it before, but sometimes you just might be surprised by what you find.

beachside - bonfire

xo Whitney Seulke

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THOUGHTFULLY DESIGNED. MODERN FUNCTIONALITY.

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table of magazine

CONTENTS

ta bl e o f c o n ten ts

AWAY

Food

When life gives you lemons...

PaG e 7

c u lt ur E

The next POP Art

PaG e 8

T r av e l

Living local: Big Sur

PaG e 1 0

ta k e away

What to take & where

PaGe 1 2

Best of the Fests

Best festivals from around the world

PaG e 1 6

r ich ar d av e do n A Portrait of an Artist

PaGe 2 6

authentic bali PaG e 3 4

s um m e r 2 0 1 5

Culture, rest & respite

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OUT. CoMPERFORM. AD

CONCIERGE

food culture travel

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WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS...

MAKE LEMON_ AID For many of us, it’s not uncommon to feel like our direction has gone a little off course at some point during our lives. While on the surface everything may be seem fine, underneath there’s a feeling of discontentment simmering away regarding our level of success, relationships, career or family life; leading us to feel like life has let us down and that our are talents are not being fully utilized.

As a personal mastery trainer and writer on happiness, my response to this is often one of agreement – as there are many instances in which our talents are not being fully realized. But guess what? This is true and will always be true for each and every one of us.

It was true of Einstein, Da Vinci, Lincoln and Gandhi, in addition to many others of their ilk and fame. It is part of the nature of life as a human being. The only way out of this is to become a fully enlightened being, but then there is no “you” left whose talents are not being utilized! If you’ve found yourself to be trapped in this mindset, the problem is that you are spending too much time focusing on what you think is wrong with your life, and too little celebrating the many things that are actually pretty good about it. Do you have a bed to sleep in, a roof over your head, an indoor toilet and a computer that you’re reading this from?

If so, you’re already better off than many. Positive thinking leads to positive outcomes. So get positive!

- Dr. Srikumar Rao photo by: Whitney Seulke

CONCIERGE food culture travel «

The Next

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By: Hamish Bowles

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FIDM’s 5th floor windows celebrate the surreal work of Elsa Schiaparelli

photographed by Carlos Diaz

P Art P

“Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word ‘genius’ is applied most often,” Time magazine wrote of its cover subject in 1934. Coco Chanel once dismissed her rival as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.”

(To Schiaparelli, Chanel was simply “that milliner.”)

Indeed, Schiaparelli—“Schiap” to friends—stood out among her peers as a true nonconformist, using clothing as a medium to

express her unique ideas. In the thirties, her peak creative period, her salon overflowed with the

green suede gloves; a pale-blue satin evening gown—modeled by Madame Crespi in Vogue—had a

"Dare to be different" wild, the whimsical, and even the ridiculous. Many of her madcap designs could be pulled off only by a woman of great substance and style: Gold ruffles sprouted from the fingers of chameleon-

stiff overskirt of Rhodophane (a transparent, glass-like modern material); a smart black suit jacket had red lips for pockets.

Handbags, in the form of music boxes, tinkled tunes like “Rose

Marie, I Love You”; others fastened with padlocks. Monkey fur and zippers (newfangled in the thirties) were everywhere.

Love of trompe l’oeil can be traced to the faux-bow sweater that kick-started Schiaparelli’s career and brought her quirky style to the masses.

“Dare to be different,” is the advice she offered to women.

Pace-setters and rule-breakers waved that flag through the sixties, the seventies, and beyond.

CoM AD

Shot on an iPhone 6.

CONCIERGE food culture travel «

What where &why STAY: Post Ranch Inn

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Rated a definite “bucket list” item by reviewers, the view from this perch is bound to be awe inspiring, just like its prices. $1,225/night

LIVING LOCAL BIG SUR, CA

by James Conaway

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“Young people were living in cars and under the bridges,” says Don McQueen, recalling the 1960s in Big Sur, the 90-mile stretch of California coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains plunge into the Pacific Ocean south of Monterey. “Once, I saw smoke coming from a field just north of here and went up to find two dozen hippies, their naked kids running around, and fires going.

Fire’s always a danger in Big Sur.” McQueen, 80, is a commanding figure—6-foot-8, size 15 boots.

“Some of the newcomers were worthless,” he adds, “but some were OK. We were so stuck in the mud around here. The new people shook things up.”

I first traveled to Big Sur in the fall of 1963, eager to explore its remote recesses, soon after I began a graduate program at Stanford University. I remember being dazzled by the coastal region’s stunning near-verticality.

It seemed a mythic landscape of impenetrable chaparral and massive redwoods stitched to headlands plunging into an impossibly blue ocean. Against this backdrop, ordinary concerns seemed to pale; to live here was to view the world through a unique lens of beauty and peril.

Scattered across the land were random clusters of wooden cottages, a few stores and campgrounds, a couple of bars and a gas station or two.

The Los Padres National Forest, which includes much of the 6,000-foot-high Santa Lucia Range, edged the highway, where shaggy figures not yet labeled as countercultural stood on the roadside, hooking their thumbs in clear, dry air. At the time, Big Sur still rested in a happy sociological trough between the demise of the Beat Generation and the advent, in 1967, of San Francisco’s Summer of Love, a

watershed moment that would bring thousands of young people west.

In the intervening years, I returned to Big Sur several times, drawn by the physical beauty and the inspirational jolt that the first glimpse always provides. The place remains for me freighted with as much mystery as reality, intimately associated with the era that McQueen invokes.

McQueen’s father, Allen, was a maintenance supervisor for the coast highway built here in the late ‘30s. Don constructed his own tourist campground along the same road in the ‘50s. “A few hippies thought they could make a living just by breaking into houses,” he tells me, adding that a rougher element, some on motorcycles, hung out in the Redwood Lodge just up the road. “That place had a hard dope problem, with fights. I told the owner I’d clear it out if he wanted.” McQueen admits to throwing “some people through windows” and to putting two troublemakers in a car, breaking the vehicle’s distributor cap with a hammer, “so they couldn’t start the engine,” and shoving them downhill in the direction of Carmel.

(831) 667-5940

VENTANA INN & SPA

“Pure serenity” is what some guests have called this quiet get-away nestled in the hillsides of Big Sur. $800/night (818) 921-7401

Eat: SIERRA MAR

A delightful evening with artfully prepared cuisine is what you’ll experience at this cliffside restaurant. $$$

DEETJEN’S BIG SUR INN RESTAURANT This historical, romantic and rustic spot is perfect for those wandering travelers in search of a little respite from the road. $$

Nepenthe

A fabulous view with plenty of outdoor seating and a laidback atmosphere… could you ask for more?? $$

play: TREEBONES RESORT

Glamping in Big Sur at its best. Stay here if you want to surround yourself with the sounds of wildlife and reconnect with nature. $300/ (877) 760-9105

Over 60 colors to choose from. Which would you choose?

TAKE AWAY

1 Bali « 2 3 4 5 What to take and where From Janis Joplin to John Lennon and Liam Gallagher, every rock star knows sunglasses should be round and retro. Le Specs’ gold-tone mirrored lenses have the requisite luxe touch, while Illesteva’s vibrant blue pair are straight from the backstage dressing-up box.

Fendi Sunglasses $450; Le Specs Lux

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Jester $120; Illesteva Porto Cervo $195

This stylish one-piece is so versatile you’ll want to incorporate it into your daily wardrobe. Add a wrap skirt and some wedge sandals and you’ve got an appropriate outfit for dinner.

Marysia Swim Mott Halter Maillot $315

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The PENTAX Q-S1 is the latest addition to the popular PENTAX Q series of compact-sized, interchangeable-lens digital cameras... fashionable and user-friendly!

Pentax Q-S1 12.4 MP Mirrorless Digital Camera with 3 in. LCD (Champagne

It’s always important to protect your skin, always.

Gold) $449.95

Neutrogena Clear Face

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Spectrum SPF 55 $6.90

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Liquid Sunscreen Broad

Traveling in style has never been easier than with this essential leather travel case set. The large case is spacious enough for all your travel-sized liquids, hair accessories, and more. The small case is the perfect size for make-up, jewelry, and other daily essentials.

Travel Case Set Pebbled Leather $95

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This full-grain deep saddle-brown leather is gently distressed through a process of antiquing. These individually crafted leather bags will last a lifetime and are sure to become heirloom possessions.

J.W. Hulme Gladstone Carry-On Bag in American Heritage Leather $1195

Bose QuietComfort 20i

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Headphones $299

Nike Air Max 90 $109.99

As the world’s smallest and lightest digital SLR camera, the new EOS Rebel SL1 is small in size but enormous in performance. It delivers images of extraordinary quality - ideal for those stepping up from a smartphone or compact camera.

Shut out the world and lose yourself in your music - or let the world in. It’s your choice with the first in-ear noise canceling headphones from Bose.

Acoustic Noise Canceling

In a city where walking everywhere is inevitable?

Walk in comfort and style with these sneaks from Nike.

A re-engineered version of the classic Air Max 90, the Essential supplies the same excellent quality and comfort.

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Neck Pillow $79

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Tempur-Pedic Transit

ta ke away

Temperature-sensitive material molds to and cradles your head and neck, creating an orthopedic shape that eliminates all pressure points. Great for your daily trip to work or when traveling to the far reaches of the world.

«

Canon EOS Rebel SL1

Digital SLR Camera $549

Singapore

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AWAY

magazine

The summer of fun 2015 ÂŤ

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« bes t fes ts

of the

BEST FESTS This year’s must see festivals from around the world.

of the

BEST FESTS In some ways, the festival is the ultimate holiday.

A life-changing experience, crammed into a few days, which transforms you from jaded commuter into free spirit, or opens your mind through art, music, poetry, performance.

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burning man NEVADA

Burning Man conjures up all kinds of outrageous images for the uninitiated: from naked New-Agers dancing till dawn to polyamorous pursuers fueled by drugs. Yes, the Playa (the desert stage location where the Man, the temple and much of the art is) is a culturally curious place, one part hedonistic, one part idealistic. But, amidst the hippies and Silicon Valley CEOs that populate this pop-up town, the common thread is an appreciation of the life-affirming nature of the artistic spirit.

photos courtesy of fest300.com

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August 30 - September 7, 2015

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albuquerque balloon fest August 30 - September 7, 2015 Over the course of nine crisp, autumn days in the agrarian oasis of New Mexico, the azure skies above the verdant Rio Grande Valley become a surreal canvas of color during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta .

Picture a connect-the-dots rainbow of mammoth balloons filling the sky, from the horizon to the stratosphere, while thousands of tiny-as-ants onlookers pepper the flats below. This is the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta , which takes place each

NEW MEXICO year at the southern end of the fabled Sangre de Cristo Mountains, just east of Navajo country and an hour from 400-year-old Santa Fe. From the early sunrise Dawn Patrol to the evening’s “Glowdeo” parade, balloon races, and much more, this event is a spectacle of wonder for all ages. The festival is book-ended by two weekends in October with balloon die-hards holed up in Albuquerque for the entire event.

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mysteryland August 30 - September 7, 2015

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The Netherlands is a huge player in the world of electronic music, with a proliferation of Dutch DJs striking global fame and fortune. It doesn’t come as a huge surprise then that one of the oldest dance music festivals originated in The Netherlands.

Established in 1993, Mysteryland is a series of electronic dance music festivals organized by the promoter ID&T .

Mysteryland’s multi-faceted and multisensory approach is based on a strong philosophy to be more than just about music and dance. At the heart of the event is the idea of “peace, love, music”, with music acts focused on discovery, providing festivalgoers

NETHERLANDS with an interactive, fun-filled and enriching experience. Today, legends from the international dance scene intermingle with the next wave of up-and-coming new and local talents to throw a memorable party for electronic music lovers from all walks of life.

Each year, Mysteryland is set upon beautiful grounds around the globe, including Haarlemmermeerse Bos, an exhibition ground that hosted the 2002 edition of the Dutch gardening festival Floriade. The festival is traditionally held on the final Saturday of August.

ÂŤ

photos courtesy of fest300.com

bes t fes ts

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holi fest August 30 - September 7, 2015

INDIA

If you happen to be in India, Nepal or Sri Lanka during the last lunar cycle of the winter, called Phalguna (usually in February or March), you just might get caught in a rainbow battlefield at the Holi festival of colors. Throngs of celebrants fling every imaginable type of brightly colored dye in the form of powder, liquid and water balloons at each other in an all out war. It’s a wildly immersive and participatory festival, as everyone gets involved, from young to old. Holi is celebrated all over the region from intimate celebrations at home to enormous street parties exploding with color. It’s very photogenic, but be warned: we lost a camera to a paintfilled water balloon on the streets of Delhi.

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amsterdam dance event October 14-18, 2015

NETHERLANDS

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Amsterdam Dance event is a five-day industry and entertainment extravaganza scattered across 115 reputable venues throughout the iconic Netherlands’ capital city. The festival boasts some of the biggest names in the international electronic club scene as well as its fair share of up-and-comers and underground artists. ADE takes place in October, meaning it bookends the tourist travel season and shares September’s usually favorable weather, providing attendees with exciting sights and sounds to feast their senses upon. In its entirety, ADE involves an astronomical 450 conference and music events – including over 2,200 DJs. It’s all business during the day with presentations and networking opportunities at ADE Pro, ADE Tech, HDE, ADE University, ADE Next and ADE Green. Things really take off at night, when the who’s who of club music creators and aficionados take over the town.

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photos courtesy of fest300.com

coachella August 30 - September 7, 2015 The polo fields of nondescript Indio in the Southern California desert transform each spring into one of the world’s most sought after musical playgrounds when The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival comes to town. The main draw has always been Coachella’s pull as a music festival , with a diverse lineup ranging from the hip and up-and-coming to the absolute monsters of rock. Today, this hot festival has become a monster of its own, typically described as just “Coachella.”

It’s a little bit of everything from large scale art installations,

CALIFORNIA which double as creative ways to beat the merciless sun, to the infamous danceathon Sahara Tent, all part of the Coachella experience. Festival junkies turn out en masse, with a distinct vibe that is uniquely Southern California: incognito Hollywood stars, tattooed hipsters, EL wire lined ravers, DayGlo-clad teens, and flip-flop-wearing beach bums all soak up the desert sunshine.

Beautiful is a great word to describe the experience: beautiful people, beautiful backdrop (palm trees and desert mountains), and beautiful musical lineups.

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AD

ved

RICHARD

ri c h a rd AVED O N

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A Portrait of an Artist

What do Jean Genet, Jimmy Durante, Brigitte Bardot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacques Cousteau, Andy Warhol, and Lena Horne have in common? They were a few of the many personalities caught on film by photographer Richard Avedon. For more than fifty years, Richard Avedon’s portraits have filled the pages of the country’s finest magazines. His stark imagery and brilliant insight into his subjects’ characters has made him one of the premier American portrait photographers.

photos by: Richard Avedon

photos by: Richard Avedon

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ri c h a rd AVED O N

« My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

Born in New York in 1923, Richard Avedon dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marine’s photographic section. Upon his return in 1944, he found a job as a photographer in a department store. Within two years he had been “found” by an art director at Harper’s Bazaar and was producing work for them as well as Vogue, Look, and a number of other magazines. During the early years, Avedon made his living primarily through work in advertising. His real passion, however, was the portrait and its ability to express the essence of its subject.

As Avedon’s notoriety grew, so did the opportunities to meet and photograph celebrities from a broad range of disciplines. Avedon’s ability to present personal views of public figures, who were otherwise distant and inaccessible, was immediately recognized by the public and the celebrities themselves. Many sought out Avedon for their most public images. His artistic style brought a sense of sophistication and authority to the portraits.

More than anything, it is Avedon’s ability to set his subjects at ease that helps him create true, intimate, and lasting photographs.

Throughout his career Avedon has maintained a unique style all his own.

Famous for their minimalism, Avedon portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops. When printed, the images regularly contain the dark outline of the film in which the image was framed.

Within the minimalism of his empty studio, Avedon’s subjects move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of spontaneity to the images. Often containing only a portion of the person being photographed, the images seem intimate in their imperfection. While many photographers are interested in either catching a moment in time or preparing a formal image, Avedon has found a way to do both.

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ÂŤ ri c h a rd Aved on Beyond his work in the magazine industry, Avedon has collaborated on a number of books of portraits.

In 1959 he worked with Truman Capote on a book that documented some of the most famous and important people of the century. Observations included images of Buster Keaton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mae West. Around this same time he began a series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Replacing the controlled environment of the studio with that of the hospital he was able to recreate the genius of his other portraits with noncelebrities. The brutal reality of the lives of the insane was a bold contrast to his other work. Years later he would again drift from his celebrity portraits with a series of studio images of drifters, carnival workers, and working class Americans.

All photographs are accurate.

None of them is the truth.

- RICHARD AVEDoN photos by: Richard Avedon

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Bali

AUTHENTIC

by Peter Jon Lindberg

AWAY heads to Bali in search of some of the island’s most authentic experiences.

A

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nd now we drink,” said the priest. The holy water came from deep within the cave in which we knelt. The priest, or mangku, had collected it in a rusty bucket left under a dripping stalactite. The cave was discovered five centuries ago by the Javanese priest Nirartha, progenitor of Bali’s particular strain of Shaivite Hinduism. In my sarong, sash, and headdress, I had nibbled the devotional rice, stuck a few grains on my forehead and solar plexus, assembled offerings, and prayed until my folded legs tingled on the cold cavern floor.

The mangku rang a bell and asked for blessings upon my wife and me. He spoke Kawi, the ancient language of poets and priests, in the rapid-fire patter of an auctioneer. The only words I understood were “hotel” and “Alila.”

Every Bali resort worth its hand-harvested salt has a slate

Ph ot os: Alila Villas Uluwatu Resort in Bali Indonesia

of edifying cultural activities, but the Alila Villas Uluwatu goes several steps beyond. Filling a dense handbook, Alila’s roster of “Journeys” offers a more immersive experience than the average guest perhaps requires.

You want to learn to play the gamelan? Practice djamoe medicine? Carve stone? Talk to the concierge.

Our choice was a guided tour of the temples of the Bukit Peninsula, on Bali’s southern coast, highlighted by a visit to the cave-hidden Pura Goa Gong, “the gong temple,” so named for a miraculous stalagmite that resonates when struck. Alila calls this excursion the Journey of Enlightenment. Before setting out we were issued a lengthy information packet that included the invaluable tip, “Sun protection and mosquito repellent are recommended for Enlightenment.”

But back to the water. My wife,

Nilou, and I eyed the bucket nervously, thinking, as one would, about dysentery. A film of algae had formed across the top.

But the water was blessed, we reminded ourselves, and couldn’t possibly hurt us. (I thought of the Ganges, where pilgrims brush their teeth downstream from women washing laundry with lye.) The mangku splashed a few drops on our heads, then lifted the ladle and administered the requisite dose. It tasted awful, like licking a battery. I suppose it was vaguely energizing. But it reeked to high heaven. As I struggled to swallow I considered that we might either reach enlightenment or die, or both.

We did not die. Not even a little. Nor, alas, did we achieve enlightenment. The holy water turned out to be benign, which was a relief and a disappointment.

Instead of wrestling with giardia or epiphany, that night we enjoyed a transcendent meal at

photos by: Hugh Stewart

a healing ritual; afternoon tea is recast as a ceremony; and a morning hike is nothing less than a pilgrimage. More than ever, the island’s resorts are making a priority of cultural relevance, promising unique entrée into Balinese art and architecture, music and dance, cuisine, traditional medicine, and social and religious life. The best hotels actually come close to providing it, granting guests a room with a view, but also a viewpoint: a compelling vantage on Bali itself. At the Four Seasons Bali at Sayan, near Ubud, one can spend the day with local farmers, learning firsthand about Bali’s ingenious subak irrigation system and even planting rice. The three resorts run by the Komaneka group—owned by the Neka family, whose patriarch founded Ubud’s Neka Art Museum—all showcase eclectic collections of contemporary Balinese art; the latest and most lavish property, Komaneka at Bisma, is a veritable gallery unto itself. These days one can have one’s karma cleansed, learn kite-making and Balinese dance, or be healed by a djamoe medicine man, often without leaving the premises. Along with cold towels and chilled juice, your hotel will bring Bali to you.

It’s easy to be skeptical. Who looks to a hotel for a genuine cultural experience? Travelers have forever wrung their hands over The Authenticity Question, from Kona to Kathmandu—but particularly so in Bali, where

tourism and tradition have had a long, strange, symbiotic relationship. (For a most incisive critique, seek out French anthropologist Michel Picard’s 1996 study, Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture.) So this is not a novel complaint. But neither is it really a complaint at all. One of the great singularities of this

“Of course Bali’s allure has always been about both spiritual pursuits and sybaritic pleasures—to the point that sybaritic pleasures are reframed as spiritual pursuits.” island—and one of the great thrills of traveling here—is the thin line between the sacred and the mundane, between the genuine and the disingenuous. If such a line even exists.

For a look at Bali’s next frontier, we ventured out to the southwestern coast, where Alila Hotels & Resorts opened its newest hotel on the island, the Alila Villas Soori. Set between green rice fields and a black-sand

ba l i

the Warung, the Alila’s Indonesian restaurant, whose tongue-tingling soto ayam (a chile-spiced chicken soup) was the best Balinese dish we had on the island. After dinner we reclined in our courtyard bale pavilion, gazing at a moonlit sea, with only the surf and the peep of geckos breaking the silence of our clifftop perch. The Alila’s clean lines and spare design—cool terrazzo and limestone offset with glowing hardwoods—made the resort even more of a retreat from the world outside its gates: an island overflowing with color and music and aromas and textures, a place that floods the senses.

Like so many travelers, we’d come back to Bali to connect with its spectacularly vibrant culture, and to see how it has endured.

For after the setbacks of the last decade, Bali is booming again.

Tourist arrivals are shattering all records. The resort enclaves of Seminyak and Kuta are so crowded with new shops, hotels, and restaurants that developers are reaching into unexploited corners of the island. Nilou and I had last visited six years ago, and in that time Bali appears to have discovered traffic: downtown Ubud was now mired in gridlock.

The town was still buzzing from Julia Roberts’s recent visit for the filming of Eat Pray Love, which has turned a whole new generation on to Bali’s mystic charms.

Of course Bali’s allure has always been about both spiritual pursuits and sybaritic pleasures—to the point that sybaritic pleasures are reframed as spiritual pursuits. Browse any hotel directory: what we call “lounging by the pool” becomes in Bali “an opportunity to meditate”; a massage becomes

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photos by: Hugh Stewart

beach, the location is stunning, and if it feels a bit sleepy that’s precisely the intention. Seminyak’s trendy boutiques are just 40 minutes away—gods and traffic willing—yet this corner of Bali is still disarmingly quiet. (There’s a reason why many expats are relocating here.)

The Soori’s trump card is its proximity to Tanah Lot, Bali’s most

breathtaking.

This is where we have to talk about the sheer sensory overload of Bali. There is simply more stuff per square foot on this island than in the entirety of Hong Kong or Manhattan: carved Garuda statues and ornamental gates, kettle gongs and suling flutes, masks and totems and effigies shaded by parasols and wrapped in checkered poleng cloths. Nearly all of it is beautiful to behold. In the West we keep our art ensconced in museums, our idolatry sequestered in churches; in Bali, devotional arts and crafts are everywhere you look, spilling onto the sidewalk. Even the gutters are strewn with frangipani petals from yesterday’s canang, prayer offerings in banana-leaf baskets.

Which is why Bali alternately enthralls and flummoxes foreign travelers. Without frames or labels to organize the visible world, a visitor is easily overwhelmed; at the end of the day your eyes—all three of them—are exhausted.

Outside a temple you’ll stop to admire the singular grace of a Ganesh sculpture, then down the street you’ll pass a yard full of 200 identical ones for sale.

And just as it’s difficult to tell whether that teak dining table is an antique or was simply left

“Bali is full of successful, formerly Type A businesspeople who moved here, saw the light, and, as a friend put it, let the island become them.” dramatically situated temple, poised on a rocky headland that becomes an island at high tide. At sunset the site is overrun by tour buses, but Alila guests can easily reach Tanah Lot in the morning before the crowds arrive.

Sparsely populated the southwest may be, but like all of Bali it brims with activity. Biking down one rural lane we came upon an artisan village devoted to the making of terra-cotta roof tiles. The air was suffused with woodsmoke from makeshift kilns; every resident was coated in a layer of fine red dust. The village was inarguably poor, yet each house was surrounded by the most intricately hewn stone wall, protecting the most gracefully realized temple and a shrine whose artfulness was

out in the rain for six weeks, so is it hard to delineate art from artifice. “But what’s real?” one’s inner skeptic cries. “What should I be looking at?” In Bali there is no easy answer, or the answer is, “Everything is real; look at everything.”

“Look at everything” could be the motto of the Hotel Tugu Bali, located on a tranquil beach in Canggu, not far from Tanah Lot. Owned by Anhar Setjadibrata, a Javanese art collector, the 22-suite Tugu touts a connection to “the art, soul, and romance of Indonesia.” Setjadibrata’s daughter Lucienne, who manages the hotel, explains that her father built the place after her mother demanded he “find someplace to store all this art and get it out of the house.” Certainly the Tugu feels more like a reliquary than a hotel. The public rooms are chockablock with Indonesian objets—stone carvings; shadow puppets; musical instruments— and every vertical surface sports a canvas or print or tapestry. It’s a fabulous place, in the true sense of the word: a vivid fantasia as rich as the tropical landscape, and just as uncontainable. Indeed, the Tugu is a microcosm of Bali itself: one wishes some magical docent would appear to explain it all.

At Tanah Lot Temple, I struck up a conversation with a FrenchIndonesian shaman who used to be a banker. Or maybe it was the reverse—I couldn’t keep track.

P ho to s: Alila Villas Soori Resort in Bali Indonesia

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He spoke in abstractions. The guy looked as if he not only lived outside the box but was no longer capable of even describing a box.

For all I knew he was worth $40 million.

Bali is full of successful, formerly Type A businesspeople who moved here, saw the light, and, as a friend put it, “let the island become them.” Even corporate hoteliers take on an otherworldly quality after enough time in Bali.

Liv Gussing, who ran Amandari for seven years until July, is the most serene hotel manager I’ve ever encountered, with a bearing best described as Zenlike. John O’Sullivan, the ebullient Irishman in charge of Bali’s two Four Seasons resorts, has a parallel career as a sort of mystic-poet and calls himself “a Celtic spirit traveling the world in search of hiding relatives.”

Bali’s most famous entrepreneur-gone-native is John Hardy, the Canadian-born jewelry designer who has lived here for 35 years. Hardy sold his stake in his namesake brand in 2007; now he and his wife, Cynthia, devote their time and considerable wealth to a variety of do-good projects, from organic farming to promoting the use of bamboo as a renewable material for construction. Three years ago the Hardys created Bambu Indah (“beautiful bamboo”), an overnight retreat—let’s not call it a resort—on their rural property south of Ubud. Seven teak bungalows—built for 19thcentury Javanese noblemen and transplanted by Hardy to Bali— perch on stilts above working rice paddies and vegetable gardens.

Reflecting the Hardys’ customary good taste, guesthouses are decorated with antiques from their travels, from Moroccan carpets to Burmese lacquer bowls. Rain showers, copper sinks, and high-tech Japanese toilets help justify the up to $310

average nightly rate. But rooms are less than bug- and snakeproof, and the unmanicured setting—the swimming pool is disguised as a pond, complete with tiny fish—underscores that \ Bambu Indah is essentially a farm stay, immersing guests in the life of a Balinese farmer. (Or, for that matter, in the life of John Hardy.)

Quirky as Bambu Indah is, it pales next to the Hardys’ latest project: a private school outside Ubud built almost entirely of bamboo. Founded in 2008, the Green School now has 160 students, 20 percent of whom are Indonesian children on scholarships. Much of the curriculum is devoted to lessons in sustainability, be it secondgraders growing their own spinach or middle schoolers using recycled and natural materials to build their own clubhouse. The Hardys intend the school to be carbon-neutral; to that end, a vortex whirlpool harnesses energy from the river. At the center of the campus is one of the largest bamboo structures on the planet: a mesmerizing series of double helixes, soaring staircases, and undulating rooflines, levitating three stories off the ground. Its shape recalls a giant lotus flower, or a UFO made of matchsticks.

“We work hard to convince people we’re not just a hippie school in the jungle,” says admissions director Ben Macrory.

“That said”—he points to a healing circle with a boulder-size quartz crystal at the center—“we’re also a hippie school in the jungle.”

The Green School has gained a following among Ubud’s expat community, which has always tilted left of center. Liv Gussing’s children were among the first enrollees, and Ben and Blair Ripple, owners of Big Tree Farms, send their daughter there. The Ripples are a remarkable pair: New York and Connecticut natives who moved to Bali 12 years

ago, intent on reintroducing sustainable farming to an island that was often turning its back on traditional agricultural ways.

I first met the Ripples in 2003, when they were farming a tiny plot on John Hardy’s estate; today, working in cooperation with local farmers around Bali and neighboring Java, they produce 100 different crops, from coffee to sea salt to coconut-palm sugar.

(Ferran Adrià and Thomas Keller are among the chefs using Big Tree products.) That Ben and Blair are still in their early thirties is one more reason to admire or hate them, depending on how you feel about your own life trajectory.

But they’re as charming as they are attractive, and blessed with contagious enthusiasm. Late one night over too many martinis at the Ubud watering hole Naughty Nuri’s, we listened raptly as Ben outlined plans for an organic chocolate factory—“Wonka-esque” was how he described it—and the revival of Big Tree’s Firefly Dinners, farm-to-table banquets held occasionally in a torchlit jungle outside Ubud. By the end of the night Nilou and I were convinced we could make a go of organic farming ourselves. Bali does that to a person.

Downtown Ubud is still a haven for the drawstring-pants crowd, with the requisite bananapancake cafés, but if you confined yourself to the town’s perimeter you might imagine every visitor was rich and every hotel was

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programs of any resort—mainly because it’s been here long enough to cultivate lasting connections. The hotel sponsors a celebrated dance program for local children, who rehearse at Amandari daily after school for twice-weekly performances.

But the highlight for Nilou and me was the cooking class, which began with an early morning trip to a nearby market. The drive out was impossibly pretty, passing mist-shrouded fields that seemed to sparkle in the sunrise, with only a flock of babbling ducks to disturb the stillness. The market was extremely rustic—or, as they say in hotelspeak, “authentic”: a rabbit warren of muddy lanes and primitive stalls piled with chicken heads, snails, and dried fish, attended by toothless women and no shortage of flies.

Needless to say, we loved it.

Nilou happily changed into her flip-flops and set off into the muck with a big straw basket and a shopping list. An hour later I had to tear her away from a spirited conversation with a shrimp-paste vendor. (That stuff was delicious.) Back in town we took our groceries to the family compound of Bapak Bawa, one of Amandari’s drivers. It was a lovely home—graced, like every Hindu household, by a modest temple in front, where we placed offerings of rice and flowers and incense.

A wood-burning stove crackled in the kitchen, and we spent the rest of the morning sautéing

fiddleheads, cooking duck curry, and stirring green-papaya soup and black-rice porridge, then enjoyed our seven-course feast on a breezy bale in back of the house that looked out on the Ayung River. It was our favorite day of the trip.

Late on our final night, en route to the airport, we rode in a taxi past Dreamland Beach.

The darkness out the window provided much-needed rest for the eyes. Suddenly, out of the black appeared a 50-foot-high statue of Lord Vishnu astride the Garuda, bathed dramatically in spotlights. It was an incredible sight, its ornate majesty a testament to Bali’s artistry and abiding faith.

Then, along the base, we noticed the sign: Pecatu Indah Resort. The statue marked the entrance to a new golf-and-beach complex—built, as it happens, by Tommy Suharto, playboy son of the late Indonesian dictator. This Vishnu had been erected not by priests but by developers; it was, for all intents and purposes, a fake, albeit a convincing one.

In that instant I recounted all the internal arguments I’d had about the real versus the unreal, the sacred versus the profane, and in that instant I realized they were all kind of pointless.

“Very beautiful,” the taxi driver murmured as we slowed to admire the statue, and I had to agree.

photos by: Hugh Stewart

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« Ph ot os: (top) Lord Vishnu astride the Garuda and (bottom) the Tanah Lot Temple in Bali

a five-star. The humblest rural lane will lead to some discreetly luxurious, $600-a-night resort— usually disguised to resemble an old Balinese village in its layout and landscaping, its architecture and iconography. The refinedrustic look is so pervasive it’s become the vernacular.

But it was only in the past 20 years that high-end resorts began to convey a convincing sense of “Bali-ness.” The trend arguably started at Amandari, which opened in 1989 along the Ayung River Gorge outside Ubud. Each of the resort’s thatched-roof villas was set in its own stone-walled compound and laid out like a traditional Balinese house. Now as then, pebbled pathways thread past lotus ponds and flower gardens; serpentine rice terraces cascade down the hillside to the river far below. The resort feels as secluded and exclusive as any, yet local residents continually pass through on a public footpath, baskets perched on heads, making their way to the riverbank. While Amandari’s design gracefully fuses indoors and out, there’s also a back-andforth between the hotel and the village just next door. In 1989 this permeability was a novel idea: no longer was a hotel simply a mansion on the hill, but a part of the community. And the agenda shifted as well, from conjuring a fantasy to accessing reality.

Two decades on, Amandari has some of the best cultural

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