The dark purple, spherical-shaped fruit, which looks like a big, dark cherry is well known in Bali as Kaliasem, and Gowok in Indonesian. There is no English equivalent for this fruit. It comes in stalk just like cherry and very sweet. You do not need to peel this fruit when you eat it but mind, you can not eat the seed, which is large and shaped like lima bean. This fruit has white flesh with reddish tinge and usually ripe in November.

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From dozens of tropical fruits that can be found in Bali, Salak or snake fruit is the oddest looking one. It is about the size and shape of a ripe fig usually round with a distinct tip, with an edible pulp; to peel, pinch the tip of the fruit and pull away. The fruit inside consists of three lobes, each lobe containing a large inedible seed. The lobes look and have the consistency of peeled garlic cloves, creamy yellow in color and have a sweet acid taste rather like a pineapple, but are crisp and crunchy. But the most distinctive feature of Salak is its reddish-brown scaly skin, and due to this feature salak is dubbed as snake fruit.

Salak plant needs high temperature and humidity throughout the year and also high and continuous water requirement. Due to this requirements, Salak plantations in Bali are concentrated in central and east Bali especially Karangasem Regency, especially in the southern slope of Mount Agung.

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One and half-hour drive from Denpasar to Sibetan village is not a waste time. The winding road to Sibetan through palm-leafed fenced terraced rice fields offers breathtaking sceneries. Rows of the rice fields perch on the slopes of the hills border here and there with bamboo and snake fruit plants create a stunning view to behold that makes one and half-hour drive seems to last only a few moments.

Situated on the foot of the majestic and still active Mt Agung, Sibetan is a quiet and traditional village, with cool temperature, and clean air. This village is well known among the Balinese as the “Home of Salak (snake fruit),” Thousands of salak trees from 14 species grow here due to the agreeable climate and extreme fertility of the soil. The Sibetan village owes this extreme soil fertility and abundance of salak plants to the Mount Agung that erupted in 1963, blanketing the village farmlands sending volcanic dust and rocks, making a return to normal agriculture impossible.

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Bali’s new Village Ecotourism Network provides an alternative to mass tourism.

Ibu Soma balances precariously on a small wooden stepladder. It wobbles a little, but she is practised at this. Rolling up her sleeves, she reaches into the tree and claims her tiny prizes one by one. They are sunset-coloured capsules, which she will sun-dry and husk, revealing the perfect coffee beans within. Her daughter picks some of the lower beans and slowly they begin to fill their basket. The work is methodical, and made even more meditative by the peacefulness of the forest-gardens around them.

The silence is interrupted only by birdsong. From far off, however, come the sounds of footsteps. Eventually a small group of visitors round a bend, pattering quietly in damp undergrowth and murmuring softly. They are headed by Gede, one of Bu Soma’s fellow coffee farmers, and a local eco-guide. They stop to admire Bu Soma’s harvest, and soon the little patch of garden is filled with chatter and laughter.

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‘AN anthropologist came to our village and I helped him take blood samples from all the villagers,” Sadra loves to explain gravely. “We sent the samples to laboratories in Europe, Australia and America. The results were all the same.”

He punches the air triumphantly: “We have blood from India!”

The villagers of Tenganan Pegringsingan have long believed this to be so and the test results validate their claim to be descended from one of Bali’s oldest races. Traditionally the home of warriors, the village, near Candidasa, on Bali’s east coast, has retained customs and beliefs now very different from the rest of the island. The best archeological guesses estimate that the village dates from the 11^th century, though not even Sadra, regarded as the local historian, can be sure.

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