DAY 31 - UBUD

Awoke to a beautiful sunny day. Nature sounds all happy with life and a new day. A nice breakfast on our terrace.

Put on our running shoes and walked around Ubud to familiarize ourselves with the place. A few stops for hydration and lunch. It's 32 degrees here, feels like 41! It's quite warm in the full sun.

Today is Melasti or Mekiyis or Melis (three days before Nyepi). Melasti was meant as the ritual to cleanse the world from all the filth of sin and bad karma, through the symbolic act of acquiring "the water of life".

Melasti ceremony is held on the edge of the beach with the aim to purify oneself of all the bad things in the past and throw it to the ocean. In Hindu belief, the source of water such as lake and sea water, are considered as the source of life. In addition to performing prayers, during Melasti ceremony, all the sacred objects which belongs to a temple, sacred equipment, being cleaned and purified, before being taken back home to their shrines.

Of course, Gary & I didn't have a clue this is happening until: we are lounging outside a coffee house, when we witness big trucks filled with people standing up, mascots, sacred temple misc., filling the street, then stopping. The street is crammed with trucks. They unlatch the backs of the trucks and hundreds of people, some mascots, and sacred temple misc., all pour out onto the streets and head to the nearby temple. Within 1/2 hour it is all clear, no sign of what we had just witnessed. What was that, we both thought in wonder? It was the return from the Malasti ceremony. :)

Had lunch along a rice field at 3 Monkeys.

Made it to our room before the afternoon rain.