CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Kubu it runs 115 km to Kubu; allow about 1 h 43 of riding. On the way it passes Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed, Royal Water Temple Pura Taman Ayun and back through Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed. It strings together lakeside roads.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 29 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go — slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
For about 30 km this is Bali Volcano and Rice Terrace Loop, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Lake Batur fills part of an enormous volcanic caldera in north-east Bali, and the first view of it, from the rim at Penelokan, is one of the island's best. The word Penelokan means a place to look, and the sight justifies it: a huge crescent of dark water about a thousand metres up, with the active cone of Mount Batur rising from the crater floor, and beyond it the bigger bulk of Mount Abang. A bigger sibling, Mount Agung, stands to the east, and at over three thousand metres it is the island's highest and most sacred peak. Batur itself last erupted in the early 2000s, and lava flows from earlier eruptions are still visible as black fields on the slopes.
Read the complete Lake Batur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lake Batur is where the day begins. Next is Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed.
Bali's rice terraces look natural from a distance, but they are in fact a machine, an old and delicate piece of social engineering that shares water among thousands of farmers. The Pakerisan river runs south from the volcanic highlands near Tampaksiring, and along its length the fields, canals and temples form a landscape that UNESCO listed in 2012 as part of the cultural landscape of Bali, built on the subak system. Ubud, a sizeable town of twenty-eight thousand people, is about ten kilometres to the south-west.
Read the complete Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Royal Water Temple Pura Taman Ayun.
Pura Taman Ayun means the temple of the beautiful garden, and it is a royal temple surrounded by a wide moat. The rajas of Mengwi built it in 1634, as the main temple of their small kingdom, and the broad lawns, canals and pavilions give it the air of a palace garden as much as a shrine. Across the inner courtyard rise the merus, shrines with tiered thatched roofs of black ijuk fibre, some with as many as eleven levels, which represent mountains and the homes of the gods. The temple lies in the middle of a district of rice fields, and it is part of the Subak cultural landscape that UNESCO listed in 2012, because the water for those fields is managed by village irrigation societies, the subak, which have been sharing it for a thousand years.
Read the complete Royal Water Temple Pura Taman Ayun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Royal Water Temple Pura Taman Ayun. Next is back through Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed, late in the day. Next is Lake Batur.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lake Batur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Lake Batur. That is the ride.
Lake Batur → Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed → Royal Water Temple Pura Taman Ayun is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Royal Water Temple Pura Taman Ayun → back through Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Subak Landscape of Pekerisan Watershed → Lake Batur is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.