Bali is a place of extraordinary lush, natural beauty. It’s also a place being swamped by the refuse of its human population. It takes all of the mind’s eye’s willful blindness to look past the trash and see the beauty. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not difficult to find many places that seem untouched by humans. But those places are shrinking, and unless something is done to help Bali dispose of its waste in an environmentally sound manner, I fear those beautiful places will eventually be lost.

For now though, you can still see many of them, from Batur to Sanur and to the west which I have yet to explore. Today, we have released the latest addition to our Zen series, featuring the temple in Lake Tamblingan named Pura Ulun Danu Bratan. It is a beautiful temple that appears to be floating on water. Already hundreds of years old, it is one of the newer temples in the complex. The first morning we visited, it was shrouded in mist. The red outrigger was moored at the shore. The light was ethereal.