Kedisan

A world away from bustling Kuta, the small rural villages of Kedisan and Buahan sit on the shore of Danau Batur, Bali’s largest lake, inside the massive caldera that also holds the active volcano of Mount Batur.

Kedisan is the busier of the two and serves as the base for boat rides across the lake to the ancient Bali Aga village of Trunyan. Its welcoming people often invite visitors into their homes to watch them practise Gamelan music, especially in the evenings, and local guides can be hired here for the climb into the great crater of Gunung Batur. Buahan sees fewer travellers, as tour buses avoid the narrow, steep and winding road down to it; from the village you can look across to the crowded lookout points over Mount Batur and the lake at Kintamani.

The road down from Penelokan reaches the lake at Kedisan, and the village is the gateway to the eastern shore. Beside the boat jetty, a small lakeside park has benches, an information board about the caldera and fine views across the water to Gunung Batur and up to Mount Abang; the boats that take visitors across the lake to Trunyan and its open-air cemetery leave from here. In the village centre, near the start of the road to Buahan and Trunyan, look for the statue of a fighting cock and a huge sacred banyan with a small shrine behind it.

From Kedisan the road splits. One branch runs north along the shore to Toya Bungkah, the main base for climbing Batur. The other heads east through Buahan, a quieter farming village with simple homestays and views back up to the lookouts on the rim, and continues along a narrow, scenic road beneath the cliffs of Mount Abang to Trunyan. On the way it passes onion and chilli fields, fish farms and the ruined gate of Pura Abang Erawang, all that survived of a lakeside temple buried by a landslide in 1917.

Kedisan is a village on the shore of Lake Batur, at the bottom of the road down from Penelokan, in the Kintamani area of central Bali. Visitors normally reach Kedisan by car or organised tour from Ubud or Denpasar along the main roads toward Kintamani/Penelokan; village roads and parking areas put viewpoints and guesthouses within a short walk.

• Plan to be in Kedisan before dawn if you’re using it as a base for a Mount Batur sunrise trek - the village is a common starting point and staying locally cuts pre-dawn travel time.
• Access the Lake Batur shoreline viewpoints from the village side roads rather than the busy main road; small local parking spots and guesthouse viewpoints offer quieter panoramas over the lake that many tour groups miss.
• Climbs of Mount Batur are made with licensed local guides; guesthouses in Kedisan can arrange one and time the start so you reach the rim before sunrise.