Getting around Sidemen

Getting to Sidemen is a solved problem: you arrange a car and somebody drives you. Getting around once you are here is the part people have not thought about, and it is the single most common way a trip to the valley goes slightly wrong.

The short version: the valley itself is walked, and everything outside it is a car for the day. There is no third option that works reliably.

Walking, which is most of it

Everything the valley is actually good at happens on foot from wherever you are staying. The terrace paths start at the edge of the village and run down towards the river; the ridge paths run along the eastern side. Nothing is signposted, nothing has an entrance, and none of it needs a vehicle.

Two things to know. The paths are earth banks maintained by farmers, so they are often wet, sometimes narrow, and usually have a drop on one side. And there is no shade out in the fields, so the middle of the day is unpleasant in a way the temperature does not warn you about.

Trainers with grip, a hat, water, and go in the morning.

Ride-hailing, which does not work here

Grab and Gojek exist in Bali and they do not solve this valley.

Coming in, drivers will sometimes accept a long fare and then cancel once they look at where it ends. Getting a car back out of the valley by app is close to impossible: there is no pool of drivers sitting here waiting, so you are asking somebody to drive up from Klungkung empty to collect you.

Inside the valley there is nothing to hail even in principle. Do not build any part of your trip on an app.

A driver for the day, which is what people actually do

The standard arrangement in east Bali, and the correct one for anything outside walking distance. You agree a price for the day, the driver waits while you are at the temple or the waterfall, and you go back when you are ready.

It is not expensive by the standards of the trip, and it is considerably better value than three separate one-way fares, because the waiting is the thing you are paying for. A day covering Besakih, a waterfall and lunch is normal. A day covering Besakih, Tirta Gangga, Amed and back is possible and is mostly a day of sitting in a car.

Where to get one: the place you are staying will know somebody, and that is usually the simplest route. Agree the price, the route and roughly what time you are back before you set off, not halfway through the afternoon.

Scooters, and why this is not the valley to learn in

A scooter opens up the wider area and plenty of people ride here happily. It is also the wrong place to ride for the first time, and that is not a general caution, it is specific to this terrain.

The lanes off the main road are steep, narrow, often wet, sometimes surfaced in concrete with a rough finish and sometimes not surfaced at all. Some of the shortcuts run at gradients you would not walk down comfortably. Add an afternoon storm in the green season and it becomes genuinely dangerous.

If you are already a confident rider, it is a good place to ride. If you are not, a driver for the day costs less than the smallest thing that can go wrong.

Practicalities either way: you need an international driving permit with a motorcycle endorsement to be legal and, more to the point, to be insured. Check your travel policy before you rent, because a great many of them exclude motorcycles entirely and a fair number exclude them unless you hold the correct licence. Helmets are not optional and the police do check on the main roads.

Fuel, and the bottles by the road

There is fuel in the village and along the main road. Away from the stations you will see racks of petrol in old drinks bottles outside shops, which is the normal arrangement in rural Bali and works fine for a scooter. Cash.

Getting out of the valley

The one genuinely important thing on this page: departures are harder to arrange than arrivals.

An arrival is a driver coming up from somewhere with a fare already agreed. A departure is a driver having to be in your village at a specific time on a specific morning, and there is no depot here to pull one from at short notice. An early flight means leaving Sidemen around four in the morning, and that is not a car you find the night before.

Settle the way out at the same time as you settle the way in.

Roughly how long things take

Every one of these is longer than the distance suggests, because almost none of the road out of here is fast road. Plan on the times rather than the kilometres.