For an Inland Adventure on Bali, Only Big Bikes Will Do

Whether hitting sun-kissed tarmac, rained-out and flooding roads or poorly maintained backstreets, the bikes held up well in all situations.   (Beritasatu Photo/Moh. Defrizal and courtesy of BMW Motorrad Bal)

” Freedom,” was how Duncan MacRae, the ponytailed head of BMW Motorrad Indonesia described it to me.

When I met MacRae a couple of months earlier as he launched the first Jakarta outlet of BMW’s motorbike unit, it started a long countdown to this day in Denpasar. As we wandered around the showroom on Jalan Bypass Ngurah Rai jumping on and off 1200cc behemoths or 600cc scooters, it was hard to hide my excitement. I didn’t bother.

It’s hard to get into “big bikes” if you’re not already halfway there.

But the slick beasts MacRae was showing me didn’t have that raw, fear-inspiring image these monsters can impress on you. To the German maker’s credit, I — an inexperienced amateur — felt safe and enthusiastic enough to jump right on.

“Be careful,” I told myself, after a quick minute on one of the models in the courtyard.

I needn’t have worried, though. Duncan had two drivers ready to guide my love affair, I Gede Supriyatna and Edwin Krisna.

We went to get leathered-up and fitted for the next day, then back to the hotel, to wait.

We set out that morning into the streets of Bali’s capital on an R 1200 GS and R 1200 GS Adventure. It was hot and heavy, and I was grateful for any lick of speed that would send air through the vents in my leathers.

Having made our way out of Jakarta the previous day, morning traffic in Denpasar wasn’t the greatest start to our journey, but it set the stage.

Slowly but surely, the macet gave way, as we slipped up side roads away from the tourists and into temple and warung territory, the bikes dipping gracefully into each turn as they began to slip free of the city, on our way to the active volcano, Gunung Batur.

Soon we were gunning past rice terraces, paddies and pura, the air whipping through our clothes and smiles broadening on our faces. Well, my face. It was tougher on my cameraman in the trailing bike. The odd truck held us up on the narrow lanes, but gave us all a moment to chat.

We made our way into a different part of the world, from the coastal plains up into the mountains.

Our first port of call was the Telaga Tunjung dam in Tabanan, where we paused to eat, drink and look over the water. We were the only visitors, and didn’t linger. Soon, we were back on our bikes and carrying on our way.

As we cut further inland, trees began to crowd the way, and we slowed our engines down to a murmur before entering a clearing and stopping at the Hindu Pura Luhur Batukaru temple, on the slopes of the Batukaru volcano.

It is a directional temple, dedicated to the god Mahadewa. We stopped, and swapped out our biking gear for sarongs before entering with one of our drivers. The other — who had a newborn baby — was required to wait outside.

There we walked among the beams, statues and roofs. Edwin’s voice joined the birds and insects as he quietly described the annual procession to the peak of Mount Batukaru, which passes through the temple.

The behavior of our drivers confirmed what we had expected coming up. This was a special place. We made our way out and were soon back on the road, and back to the roar of our engines.

But the mood had changed. I was no longer hard-charging and bursting with the rush of speed and getting out of the city. The temple had pressed on us a sense of old Bali. As we climbed higher toward the mountains, I felt elevated and freer than when we had left the city.

By the time we reached our lunch destination, I was worlds away from the Blaise of the morning.

We ate overlooking the Jatiluwih Green Land. A Unesco World Heritage site, the ancient irrigation system cascades down the landscape, pooled water glistening under the midday sun.

It was hard to believe that just a day earlier I had been cursing a passing motorcyclist who slammed a taxi door on my ankle.

We rode higher and the weather began to turn. Clouds came shuffled in overhead, replacing the sun with English-gray skies, then the wind and the first drops of rain. We stopped at an abandoned school to put on extra rain cover.

Before making our final push to the mountaintop we stopped on the Tukad Bangkung Bridge, linking the subdistricts of Badung and Kintamini, over 70 meters up and one of the highest in Asia.

There, above the village of Plaga, we watched the clouds wrestle distant peaks, drinking quietly and soaking and in a lull in the wind.

I had missed the opportunity to seal off the vents in my leathers before rain struck and had got very wet, but I started to warm up, and not a moment too soon.

It poured. Water covered the roads, traffic slowed to a crawl and visibility fell to almost nothing. Here, the skill of our drivers really came out.

Even under that weather, it was still fun. A lot of the pleasure was down to the bikes themselves. The suspension carried you over rutted tarmac, with enough feeling to be close to it, but none of the discomfort. Under heavy rain, on poor roads or shooting down hot tarmac, they were in their element.

We reached a cafe on top of Mount Batur and had coffee, fried bananas and cigarettes.

There was an exclusionary precept I held about biking, a world of gas-guzzling and noise. This was nothing like that.

Overlooking Mount Batur, hammered by rain, soaked, cold and barely able to watching the crater emerge from the fog — I couldn’t have cared less.