Uluwatu Temple

Uluwatu Temple sits on a 70-metre limestone cliff at Bali's southwest tip, where the island falls straight into the Indian Ocean. From a helicopter the temple is small — a cluster of dark pavilions against pale rock — and the cliff is the real subject.

*Pura Luhur Uluwatu* — literally "the great temple at the head of the rock" — is one of Bali's six *Sad Kahyangan* directional temples, the spiritual anchors that guard the island from each of its cardinal points. Uluwatu guards the southwest. The original shrine is attributed to the Javanese sage Mpu Kuturan in the 11th century; the version visible today was rebuilt in the 16th century by Dang Hyang Nirartha, the same priest associated with Tanah Lot.

The temple sits on the edge of a sheer cliff that drops 70 metres into the surf at the base of the Bukit peninsula. The headland was sacred long before the temple was built — early Balinese believed it was the point where the soul reached final liberation. The monkeys living in the forest around the temple are considered guardians of the site by local priests, which is the reason they are tolerated despite being notorious for stealing sunglasses.

The clifftop is also the home of the daily *kecak* dance, performed in an open-air amphitheatre just south of the main shrine at sunset. The amphitheatre is invisible from the temple itself but clearly readable from the air.

The helicopter approach to Uluwatu is one of the most cinematic in South Bali. The Bukit peninsula ends in a long white cliffline that runs roughly east–west; the temple sits at its westernmost point, where the cliff turns the corner into open ocean. At cruise altitude you see the temple silhouetted against the swell rather than against the headland — a perspective ground visitors physically cannot reach.