Our world is racy, demanding, exhausting. Well, at least when you’re on the supplier side. Confronted with never ending requests, in a harsh competition with concurrent entities and the need to be available 7x24. From a consumer point of view, the rotation speed of our earth is just right, the shops could even be open a little bit longer sometimes, don’t you think? Anyway, one thing fits the other and after having the idea on a Monday, I found myself surprisingly in an airplane to Bali on Wednesday morning.

Completely unprepared I stumbled through the crowded island. The first hours passed like every first hours pass in a new country. Get local currency, find a place to sleep, find a place to eat, buy an electric adapter and a mobile phone card not to be cut off the modern world mentioned above. The supply chain in the touristic centers of Bali seems endless, so the difficulty is not to find something but to find the appropriate.

It took me some time to get into it. It was after I found this pretty, small and nameless guest house on the second day and rented a small scooter to explore the countries backyard the days after. A felt eternity lies between my last mountain pass cruise and the beautiful drive on the narrow street that winds its way up the slopes of a volcano. To rest in an arbitrary village, stroll through the local market and observe the people doing their businesses are my favorite.

With growing travel experience, I’m more and more something between obtrusive and inconspicuous. I’m not afraid to be close anymore. In contrary, I developed the passion to completely submerge in a crowd as long as I’m tolerated. So I walk the main street of Sanur in the middle of a huge procession and when we finally reached the beach, I was somehow accepted as a participating element. The occasion was the public cremation of a deceased priest. It was an enormous celebration with hundreds of people, most in traditional cloths. There was a huge cow statue of wood and white fabric. After the corpse was laid into the torso of the construction, together with many different gifts, it was finally lit on fire, accompanied from music, dances and prayers. When two young guys next to me started to cry, I realized that I was standing among the dead’s family. This moment was so touching that it turned all this around me to something personal. I wasn’t the independent observer anymore. Now I was part of those who said good bye to a deceased person, who is loved and missed by those left behind. And I couldn’t hold back a tear or two myself.

To travel is to live.