A silver lining in pandemic-hit Bali: with no tourists, cycling the roads is easy ... if only some weren’t so steep
- When the tourists stopped arriving, people on the Indonesian holiday island dusted off their bicycles and reclaimed the roads, your correspondent included
- A thigh-crunching 220km ride from the island’s south to north affords views of glorious landscapes and rural life, and some welcome highland hospitality
Before the coronavirus pandemic, I wouldn’t have got on a bicycle in Bali for a billion dollars. The island’s grinding traffic – the result of narrow winding roads and tourist numbers that surpassed 16 million arrivals in 2019 – made the proposition a game of Russian roulette.
But when an international travel ban was introduced in April last year, traffic was reduced to a trickle and thousands in Bali, like millions all over the world, dusted off rusty bikes or invested in new ones and reclaimed the streets in the name of recreation, transport and good health.
I was among them. At first, I limited myself to the deserted tourist district of Kuta, where I spent the afternoons gliding along uninterrupted on a coastal boardwalk previously hidden under a sea of tourists and hawkers. But as my confidence grew, I ventured further afield, eventually reaching the World Heritage-listed Jatiluwih Rice Terraces, an 80km return journey through the green valleys of central Bali.
Now, a year later, armed with a lightweight, carbon-fibre mountain bike and stout calves to match, I’m attempting to cross the island from south to north on a two-day, 220km (135-mile), thigh-crunching journey from the south coast surfing mecca of Canggu to the twin lakes of Buyan and Tamblingan. A mountain resort area in the central north of the island with a cool climate, pristine waterfalls, vast coffee plantations and views of deep blue crater lakes edged by cloud-ringed mountains, the lakes stake a claim as the Switzerland of Bali.
From Canggu, I head west to Tabanan, one of eight regencies of the island. The main road is busy with traffic again but after the first turn, I enter another world, pedalling past emerald green rice terraces that drop like the keys of a giant piano towards the coast.