a midnight mountain climb, a cheeky motorbike taxi ride, and the kismet timing of your own life
JUL 12, 2026
The summer of 2026 smells entirely of exhaust fumes, salty air, fermented shrimp paste, sewage, and hot americanos. It is a season of sharp, dizzying contrasts. Even though it is summer in my mind, by geographic standards it is winter here in Bali. The tropical warmth remains the same, but the air is crisper, lighter, drier, and the days are just that little bit shorter.
I move into a small cottage on the edge of the rice fields. It sits only six hundred meters away from my last villa, but it feels like a completely different world. On soft-sticky-warm mornings, I wake early to watch the sun rise over a distant mountain, stretching his gold rays across the rice terraces to light up another day.
𓇢𓆸
Not from delight or exhilaration, I weep as we climb to the top, from pure exhaustion and fear. Our guide had suggested we stay low in a sheltered overhang. The wind is so ferocious it feels ready to pluck my body from the rocks I am gripping and fling me into a deadly abyss. But the boys in our group want to press on, determined to make it to the summit like we said we would.
Tears prick my dust-filled eyes as streams of volcanic shale blast against our faces. I cling to the peak of the volcano, repeating, “I chose this,” over and over again like a mantra. Three weeks earlier, when my friend Gabriel mentioned he wanted to organise a group to climb Mt. Agung — an active volcano and Bali’s largest mountain — I immediately agreed to join. I have always wanted to do it, but I am simply not the type to go out of my way to orchestrate an expedition like this myself. Now, after six hours of an almost vertical ascent, mostly in the pitch black, I deeply regret my choice.
Then, out of the dark void, a figure materialises.
He is completely barefoot, his toes gripping the sharp volcanic rock while the gale blasts his thin t-shirt and snaps his sarong like a sail. He carries no torch, no headlamp. Strapped to his spine is a massive woven basket, yet he effortlessly balances a guitar in his arms, strumming and singing Hare Krishna songs straight into the teeth of the wind. Where we are trembling and broken, he is entirely unbound, channelling the divine and moving through the dark with absolute trust and presence.
𓇢𓆸
Weeks before I ever set foot on Mt. Agung, this lesson is already waiting for me in a sun-faded garage. I am hunting for a secondhand bookstore, following a stray pin on Google Maps that leads me deep into an unlikely pocket of urban sprawl, far from any proper town. Two torn sarongs hang like makeshift curtains at the entrance, shading a cavernous garage packed with books whose spines are bleached pale by the Indonesian sun. The shop is run by a tiny, toothless old woman who barters with ferocious energy. Looking at the shelves, I get the distinct impression that these books have been burped up by a hundred different hotels… hastily left behind by departing tourists, only to wash ashore in this strange sanctuary.
My favourite way to choose books is to let them choose me. I treat them like a tarot spread, waiting for a specific spine to pull my hand toward it from the cluster. Without reading their descriptions, I walk out with two: Bitter Chocolate and The Shack.
Back home, I inspect my haul. The Shack intrigues me immediately. A spiritual text charting a man’s direct, shattering experience with God. I inhale it in two days. It leaves me with a whirring, glistening sensation, a profound reminder that when I merge my true Self with the divine and trust in life completely, everything I could ever yearn for is already at my fingertips. The key is, and always will be, in releasing my human-made fears and replacing them with such a deep surrender and trust that my mind no longer feels the need to control every moment of my experience.
Like the man up on the mountain.
𓇢𓆸
On my first morning in my new place, I tumble out of bed at 7:00 am to drag my weary, not-a-morning-person body to an 8:00 am boxing class. By 7:20, I have poured myself into a cute, sage-green organic bamboo athletic set: a prize from a yoga studio raffle some weeks back. Slinging a basket filled with water, keys, and my purse over my shoulder, I sway toward the pop-up coffee cart sitting just twenty meters away on the other side of the road.
The sun is directly in my eyes, reducing a man sitting by the roadside to a sharp silhouette against the newly risen light over the rice fields. Two small dogs are tied to his chair. “You can come say hello to them,” he says as I squint through the glare. “I will right after I order my coffee,” I croak from my not-yet-warm vocal cords.
I turn to the wide smile of the barista. “One flat white, please.” “Regular milk?” “Yes, please.”
I take a seat next to the man and his dogs. I pet them gently and joyfully, immediately forgetting their names the second he says them.
It’s not actually that I’m not a morning person. I love mornings. I love waking up early. It’s just that it takes me about three hours to successfully migrate from the land of dreams to the land of the living. Within that three-hour twilight zone, any form of thinking or communicating is essentially void.
The man introduces himself. He is a hypnotherapist from the Midlands of the UK who has lived here for two years now. He has a funny eye; I think it might be a glass eye because it doesn’t move. I plan on asking him about it one of these days when it no longer seems insensitive or cruel.
“I have to go,” I tell him after drinking my coffee in a few quick sips. “I don’t want to be late.” We exchange numbers and promise to meet again soon. I’ve made a new friend.
𓇢𓆸
I book a motorbike taxi to pick me up at 7:07 AM. Today is immigration day: time to extend my visa. As soon as we pull away and the morning air rushes over my skin, I realise it is chilly. I instantly regret not grabbing a jacket to shield myself from the wind.
My driver strikes up the usual conversational loop: Where are you from? How long have you been here? Do you want to stay? “Austria,” I tell him. “Six months. And yes.”
I throw the same questions right back to him. Java. Two years. Yes.
He weaves through the morning traffic like an expert. Every driver here has a completely different style, but this one I really like. He is smooth and fast and fearless. He turns his head slightly, telling me I am the final passenger of his seventeen-hour shift. “Seventeen hours!!” I gasp. “Is that normal?” Not really, no. He explains that they don’t actually have shifts; they have daily quotas to hit, and because he despises the daytime gridlock, he chooses to hunt for fares all through the night.
“How old are you?” he asks. “Thirty-seven.” He looks incredulous and glances back at me briefly over his shoulder. “I thought you were twenty-four or twenty-five. Are you lying to me?” I laugh. “How old are you?” “Thirty-five,” he says. “Okay,” I reply.
Truthfully, I have no way of knowing. I can see absolutely nothing of his face except the dark glint of his eyes between the layers of protective gear he wears, wrapped up tightly like all the drivers here.
“Do you believe me?” he asks. “Sure. If you say you’re thirty-five, I believe you.” He lets out a loud laugh. “I lied. Because you lied.” I laugh again. “I am not lying!” “I’m twenty-one,” he admits. “You’re a baby!” He chuckles. “Yeah. Want to be my mommy?” “Hard no,” I reply.
We pull up to the immigration office ten minutes before the doors even open. It doesn’t matter; a massive queue is already snaking out past the parking lot and spilling onto the main road. The driver quickly ushers me toward the tail end of the line, waves, and disappears into the traffic.
𓇢𓆸
I take my ticket number and settle in. It takes three-and-a-half hours until the loudspeaker finally chimes “Number 099, please go to counter two”.
I hand over my ticket and my passport. The officer scans the documents into his computer, types a few lines, and then fixes his eyes on me. “Where is your exit flight?”
“I don’t have one yet,” I tell him. “You have to have a flight back to your home country. NOW.”
“New laws,” he adds, harshly. “Since when?” I ask. I’ve been performing this visa extension dance since the start of the year and have never needed one.
“Since last week,” he replies flatly. “Okay. I need a minute,” I say. He motions me away from the desk, steering me back toward the seating rows. “Come back to my counter when done.”
I nod my assent and walk back to the chairs. Only a couple of weeks ago, I started seriously considering making this place a more permanent home. I already knew that to secure a legitimate long-term visa, I would eventually have to leave the country to sort out the logistics. I had even mapped out a loose plan in my head, talking with friends about returning to Europe for a while.
Sitting under the harsh fluorescent light of the waiting area, looking at my phone, I feel a sudden wave of gratitude for my own intuitive foresight. This unexpected redirection doesn’t arrive as a shock. Instead, it feels like divine timing: a gentle, kismet nudge from the universe directing and guiding me exactly where I am supposed to go next.
I sit on the concrete stairs at the back of the building, the screen of my phone glowing as I book a one-way ticket to Athens, Greece. I add thirty kilograms of luggage. The heavy physical weight of dragging my life from one corner of the globe to another. I am going to visit my sister and a few close friends who live there. A part of me feels instantly lighter, knowing that I will soon be wrapped in the comfort of people who love me.
All around me, at least a hundred other expats are visibly spiralling, crushed by the weight of this sudden legal shift that has abruptly left so many of them stranded or effectively homeless.
I walk back inside to counter two. I wait for the officer to catch my eye, and when he waves me over, I slide into the seat and hand over my passport alongside my phone displaying the confirmed ticket.
His demeanour instantly softens. I realise he has probably been ordered to play the role of the harsh, grumpy bureaucrat to enforce this abrupt policy change. He clicks through the final screens on his computer, logs the paperwork, and tells me my visa extension will hit my inbox sometime next week.
Just like that, the clock begins ticking. I have exactly five weeks left on this island: this beautiful, chaotic sanctuary that has helped me completely rebuild my life.
Overflowing with gratitude for every single moment I’ve been gifted here, I head straight to the coast to celebrate with a swim at my favourite turquoise-blue beach. I might return to Bali one day, but for now, I am doubling down on every single thing I love about this place while I still can.