Bali Spirit Festival
Denitsa Kibarska/Bali Spirit Festival
Bali cornered the market on wellness tourism in Southeast Asia long before "Eat Pray Love." The Bali Spirit Festival brings the island’s spirituality to a fever pitch, with a seven-day festival of workshops, concerts, markets and other events.
Taking place in Bali’s cultural capital, Ubud, the Bali Spirit Festival brings in visitors looking to explore different dimensions of their spiritual selves. Yoga lovers can take part in classes covering different disciplines: Vinyasa, Astanga, Kundalini, Tantra and more. Dance classes take participants on a different kind of flow, and nightly music festivals combine the best of world music and hypnotic EDM beats.
Holistic healing methods, championed by different experts from around the world, can be experienced through sessions throughout the week. And a wide range of other spirituality-related workshops will unfold throughout the course of the festival.
In 2020, the Bali Spirit Festival takes place in April (dates TBA).
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Tumpek Wayang
Frans Lemmens/Getty Images
The most important day of the year for Balinese wayang (shadow puppet) performers, Tumpek Wayang sees a flowering of wayang performances throughout the island.
The tradition of holding wayang performances on this date is rooted in Balinese myth. Balinese Hindus believe that the god of the underworld, Batara Kala, has cursed children born on Tumpek Wayang; such “wrongly born” people can purify themselves by staging a special type of shadow play called the sapuh leger.
When visiting during Tumpek Wayang, check with a local community for a sapuh leger performance, or swing by a local Balinese temple to see the puppets, arranged in a row for blessing by a priest.
Tumpek Wayang follows the 210-day pawukon calendar; in 2019, the festival takes place twice, on April 20 and November 16.