How does a traveler experience the surroundings a new land has to offer. Should it be always that it is just a few destinations that a traveler needs to concern themselves with or do they concern themselves with every frame nature has to provide and in doing so turn the entire journey into a sense of adventure. Robert M. Pirsig aptly summarized the fun of travelling in a beautiful way in his epic “Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance”
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through the car window everything is you is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On the Indonesian Islands, two wheelers were colorful, easily available and fun to drive. The local populace seem to be very fond of their scooters and did decorate them in style whenever the opportunity presented itself. And so it was, the two wheeler was the chosen mode of our travel in Indonesia.
Before we could get down to enjoying our travels, there was a small matter of getting an Indonesian license. Now, mostly visitor’s drive in Indonesia without license and the locals could not understand why I wanted a license. However, we wanted to drive extensively through Bali, Lombok and Java and so we decided to put in the extra effort to get the license. Now getting a license is not a straight forward affair in Indonesia and after a fair amount of research we were able to target the Poltabes in Denpasar for the license. And so we drove ironically without license in order to get a license and after few interesting exchanges, I was the proud owner of an Indonesian license and we were on our track to explore this beautiful country.
With the license under our belt, the adventures started. We could drive confidently where ever we wanted and did so to our hearts delight. We explored the islands of Lombok, Bali and Java extensively. Lombok, with its beautiful ocean side roads all the way from Rinjani National Park to the beautiful southern beaches of Mawi and Mawun was a tourer’s dream. Exploring the island of Bali and its lush green country side studded with Paddy fields was a delight to the senses. Riding to centuries old monuments in Java enhanced their charm by leaps and bounds. We wonder whether our trip would have been equally enthralling had we not explored it on a two wheeler. The answer is obvious to us as both our head and heart having been treated to the spectacular sites in every frame of time during our stay vouch for the experience. And guess what, we haven’t let the wonderful smell of barbecue that used to the transform the experience near the small fishing villages cloud our judgement.
Having a two wheeler with us also led us to enjoy the vacation from a local’s perspective. We could make multiple runs to the grocery stores for that missing ingredient. No problem, if we needed to try out a new Warung at an odd hour. Additionally a historical place offers different insights at different points in time during the course of the day as we found out at Prambanan and Borobudur. Multiple trips to Prambanan to see the Ramayana Ballet in the backdrop of the temple and to see the temple itself in the first ray of sun were facilitated simply because there was no reliance on the cabs. The flexibility and the economy which the two wheeler provided was matchless in addition to the wind in the hair that made our trip so memorable.
Leave a Reply