Bali and Java in ten days

Day 1

Arrive in Yogyakarta

The airport is forty-five kilometres west of the city, which surprises people. There is a rail link from the terminal that reaches Yogyakarta station in about forty minutes and beats the road at almost any hour; we use it unless your luggage says otherwise. Nothing is scheduled. Malioboro in the evening is loud and worth an hour.

Day 2

Borobudur at opening

The upper terrace on the timed slot, before the heat

Forty kilometres northwest, and you leave early because the reason to leave early is physical rather than aesthetic: the monument is bare stone with no shade at all, and by ten the terraces are unpleasant to stand on. Numbers on the upper terraces are capped and issued as a timed slot with a guide, booked before you fly rather than on the day. Built in the ninth century, abandoned within a couple of hundred years, buried under ash and forest, and dug out again in the nineteenth. The galleries below hold two and a half kilometres of carved relief if you walk them all.

Day 3

The kraton, and Prambanan in the late light

Prambanan in the last hour before closing

A morning in the city: the sultan’s kraton, which is a working court rather than a museum, the water castle, and a batik workshop where the wax is drawn by hand rather than printed. Prambanan in the late afternoon — a cluster of tall, sharp-edged Hindu towers from roughly the same century as Borobudur, the Shiva temple at the centre standing about forty-seven metres. It faces west and it improves as the light drops.

Day 4

Fly to Bali, and up to Ubud

An hour and twenty in the air to Denpasar, several services a day. From the airport it is an hour and a half to two hours up to Ubud, and longer in the peak weeks — the coast road north is the worst stretch of road on the island. We stay a little out of the town centre, north towards Tegallalang or west above the Ayung gorge, for reasons that become obvious on the first morning.

Day 5

Ubud, on foot and early

The Campuhan ridge at six, with mist still in the valley

The Campuhan ridge walk at six in the morning, before the heat and before anyone else. Then the terraces — not the one with the swing and the queue, but the working ones above Tegallalang where the subak irrigation system is still run by the village associations that have managed it since the ninth century. The afternoon is free: the palace, the market before eight, or the monkey forest, which is a genuine temple complex and also full of monkeys that will take your sunglasses.

Day 6

The temples of the interior

Tirta Empul before the coaches

Tirta Empul, where Balinese Hindus have bathed in the spring since the tenth century and where you may bathe too if you are dressed and behave as a worshipper rather than as an audience; your guide will explain what that means before you decide. Gunung Kawi, cut into a river gorge and reached down 300 steps. Neither is crowded before nine. If you would rather climb, Mount Batur is two hours up volcanic scree in the dark with a good deal of company at the top, and we will book it and tell you honestly what it is.

Day 7

Down to the coast

The first afternoon with nothing arranged

Two coasts and we pick with you rather than for you. East: Amed and Tulamben, black sand, few visitors, and the Liberty wreck lying in shallow water a few metres off the beach — the easiest good wreck dive in Asia and snorkellable from shore. South: the Bukit peninsula, limestone cliffs, proper surf and the sunset temple at Uluwatu. The east is quieter; the south has the better hotels and the worse traffic.

Day 8

The coast, at your own pace

The Liberty wreck at seven in the morning, if you are east

Diving or snorkelling if you are east — the wreck, and the drop-off at Amed — or the cliff temples and the beaches if you are south. We book what you ask for and nothing you do not. One suggestion either way: an early boat, because the water is flat before nine and choppy by eleven on both coasts.

Day 9

The last full day

Free. A cooking class, a day on the water, a silversmith at Celuk, or nothing. If you want one last piece of the island, Uluwatu at sunset on the south coast or the Lempuyang gate at dawn on the east — the second requires being told that the famous reflection is produced with a piece of glass held under a phone, which is worth knowing before you queue for it.

Day 10

Denpasar, and home

Back to the airport, which is an hour and a half from the east coast and about forty minutes from the south in ordinary traffic and considerably more in the peak weeks. We build the transfer to the wide figure, not the narrow one.