A lovely trip is guaranteed if you travel to North Bali and choose to follow the road over the mountains via Kintamani. Here you find all aspects of Balinese nature, passing rice fields, volcanoes, lakes, forests and small villages. You can easily drive from south Bali to Singaraja in one day, but to be able to stop and see everything on the way there, you could easily spend many days or weeks. There are 4-5 alternative roads to Kintamani from South Bali, many choose to go via Ubud or Bangli, where you can spend the night.

The Gunung Batur volcano has also given name to the largest lake on Bali and to a village. The volcano is still active and the smoke is constantly seeping out of the mountain which is located inside a huge caldera. The top is 1.717 meter and had it's last eruptions in 1917 and 1926. The 1917 eruption killed about 1.000 people and destroyed the Batur village on the southern slopes of the volcano. The villagers rebuilt their homes and continued to live there until 1926 when a new eruption left the village completely in ruins.

High up on the southern slopes of Gunung Batur, Bangli has a temperate climate which maybe is among the most comfortable on Bali. Once this was the capital of a kingdom, now it is the capital of the Bangli region. The town is spread out along the main road and do not have a large, defined center. This is a quiet, tidy and nice place, not many souvenir stalls and nightclubs here.

The Bukit peninsula is located on the southernmost part of Bali, just south of the airport. Bukit is different from the rest of Bali, it is dry with sparse vegetation, similar to several places by the Mediterranean sea. In former days it was used as hunting fields for the raja's of Denpasar. At the southern point of Bukit sits Pura Luhur Uluwatu, a famous temple on top of a high cliff, about 90 meters above the Indian ocean.

Seseh is located on the southwest coast of Bali, north of Kuta and Canggu. This is a lovely cultural landscape with fertile rice fields, traditional villages and a nice coastline. Pantai Seseh is by the Hindus considered as sacred, like several other beaches on the island. People from the Mengwi district come here before Nyepi (the quiet day) and perform a ceremony called melasti (cleansing). Mukur, a ceremony which is held after a cremation, is also performed here.

Sangeh is a small village 20 km north of Denpasar, and home to one of the large attractions on Bali; the Bukit Sari monkey forest. Bukit Sari is famous for it's old temple and of course the many macaque monkeys which rules the forest. The temple, Pura Bukit Sari, is probably built in the 17th century. In the temple yard there is an interesting statue of the mythical Garuda bird.

Along the main road from South Bali to Bedugul via Mengwi, about 30 km from Denpasar, you will pass through the small Perean village. Perean sits in a typical agricultural area, with beautiful rice fields and a large variety of vegetables and other crops. The village is best known for it's old temple, Pura Yeh Gangga. "Yeh gangga" means "water from Ganges".

On the northeast coast of the Bukit peninsula is Nusa Dua with it's many luxury hotels. These hotels are not frequently visited by backpackers, and you could easily empty your bank account here. The rooms are normally priced in US dollars, on some hotels you have to prove that you are a guest to enter. This is in many respects an artificial version of Bali closed for the "real" daily life going on at the outside.

Mengwi is famous for the unique Pura Taman Ayun state temple, which was the most important temple in the Mengwi kingdom before Mengwi was conquered by the neighbouring Badung and Tabanan in 1891. Mengwi was at that time a large kingdom stretching all the way to East Java. Taman Ayun was built in 1634 by King I Gusti Agung Anom and restored in 1937. The temple consist of an "island" surrounded by water channels and a garden complex, the complex of buildings are made up of about 50 different structures.

Kuta with it's large assortment of hotels and restaurants in all price layers is without doubt the largest tourist area on Bali. Originally Kuta was just a small fishing village, but since the 1970's it has seen a huge growth in tourism. The Kuta district today can be separated in four areas. Tuban is furthest south and just north of the airport, where there are some large hotels and shopping centers. North of Tuban is Kuta with the majority of the hotels and shops and also the most popular beach.