Tenganan travel guide

(Admission to village by donation, vehicles prohibited. It is possible to walk the 3 km from Candi Dasa; take the road heading north, 1 km to the west of Candi Dasa – it ends at the village. Alternatively, walk or catch a bemo heading west towards Semarapura, get off at the turning 1 km west of Candi Dasa and catch an ojek up to the village. Tours to Tenganan are also arranged by the bigger hotels and the tour agents on the main road. Bemos run past the turn-off for the village from Denpasar’s Batubulan terminal.)

This village is reputed to be the oldest on Bali, and is a village of the Bali Aga, the island’s original inhabitants before the Hindu invasion almost 1000 years ago . The walled community consists of a number of longhouses, rice barns, shrines, pavilions and a large village meeting hall, all arranged in accordance with traditional beliefs. Membership of the village is exclusive and until recently visitors were actively discouraged. The inhabitants have to have been born here and marry within the village; anyone who violates the rules is banished to a neighbouring community. Despite the studied maintenance of a traditional way of life, the inhabitants of Tenganan have decided to embrace the tourist industry. It is in fact a very wealthy village, deriving income not only from tourism but also from a large area of communally owned and worked rice paddies and dryland fields.

Tenganan is one of the last villages to produce the unusual double ikat or geringsing, where both the warp and the weft are tie-dyed, and great skill is needed to align and then weave the two into the desired pattern. The cloth is woven on body-tension (back-strap) looms with a continuous warp; colours used are dark rust, brown and purple, although newer pieces suffer from fading due to the use of inferior dyes. Motifs are floral and geometric, and designs are constrained to about 20 traditional forms. It is said that one piece of cloth takes about five years to complete and only six families still understand the process. Note Much of the cloth for sale in the village does not originate from Tenganan.

About 13 km southwest of Candi Dasa is the temple and cave of Goa Lawah .