Bali is often sold as paradise: sun-drenched beaches lined with swaying palms, beach clubs pulsing with music into the night, smoothie bowls arranged like colourful mandalas, and wellness retreats promising deep transformation. In places like Legian or Seminyak, the island sparkles with curated experiences designed to offer escape and renewal. But drive three hours northeast from Denpasar—through winding mountain roads and past the smoking silhouette of Mount Batur—and the atmosphere shifts. You arrive at the edge of Lake Batur in Kedisan, where the only way forward is by boat. Across the water lies Trunyan, a remote village tucked between dense jungle and sheer volcanic cliffs, home to around 600 people.
Far from the tourist trail, Trunyan feels like a world unto itself. Accessible only by water, it remains untouched by Bali’s polished postcard image. There are no beach clubs here, no smoothie bowls, no curated wellness. Trunyan holds something older, quieter—an enduring connection to the island’s original inhabitants, the Bali Aga, who continue to practise customs that pre-date Hinduism’s arrival. Here, history is carried in the breath of daily life—in the way the living and the dead share the land and the air. The dead are not cremated or hidden from view. Their bodies are laid in bamboo cages and left to return slowly to the earth beneath the shade of the Taru Menyan tree, whose sweet fragrance absorbs the scent of decay.
I came here carrying death with me—my quiet companion, as it always is. I thought of those I’ve lost, the ones who should have stayed longer. Death has a way of travelling with you. It doesn’t wait at home; it climbs into the boat, walks beside you on quiet paths. It settles into new landscapes like an old ache. And Trunyan didn’t take it away. It gave it space. No fires to turn bone to ash. No earth to bury the evidence. Just time. Just air. Just a slow return.
It made me wonder: what if we allowed death to be like this—something we didn’t rush, didn’t hide, didn’t dress up in urgency? What if we let it breathe? Sat beside it. Watched it shift. Trusted it to decompose into something else—something we could live with? In Trunyan, children grow up knowing how to tend the dead. Elders pass on what isn’t written down—when offerings are made, how to speak to the lingering soul, which gestures guide the spirit safely from body to elsewhere. Nothing here is hurried. Nothing is hidden. And maybe that’s what death asks of us too. To sit. To witness. To stay.
In this village, death doesn’t haunt. It teaches. And the presence of it—open, unhurried, and held—becomes something almost sacred.
