Crowded streets jammed with rented scooters. Litter-strewn, eroding beaches. Pushy touts on every corner. Bag-snatchers on motorbikes. Dodgy cocktails at dubious bars. Half-finished concrete building sites along the coast. Street stalls selling tacky souvenirs and novelty motorbike helmets.
Reading the almost monthly exposes of how Bali, “Paradise Island”, is no longer paradise at all, it is easy to write off the entire island. Most of the criticism, however, focuses on Kuta, once a quiet village with a surf beach on the post-hippie Asia trail, today a destination for mass-market package tourism and everything that comes with it. Bali still has unspoilt beaches and quiet corners, and one of the best routes to another side of the island runs inland, away from the coast, into the rice fields, the temples, the art galleries and the traditional villages in and around Ubud.
Ubud itself is far from undiscovered. Even when Elizabeth Gilbert visited in 2004, equipped with a publisher’s advance, as part of the year abroad that became the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, the town was already on the map. The release of the film version with Julia Roberts in 2010 turned what was once a quiet rice-paddy town into one of the most famous spiritual and creative destinations in Southeast Asia. Yet once you see past the tour buses and the racks of hippie pants, Ubud remains an outstanding introduction to the real Bali. This 2026 guide walks through the festivals, the religion, the art, the food, the yoga retreats and the practical details for a first visit.
Festivals
Thanks in part to the Bali Spirit Festival each March and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival each October, Ubud is the artistic and cultural capital of Bali for locals, travellers and expats alike. The Spirit Festival brings together yoga teachers, dancers and world music acts from across the globe for a week of workshops and concerts, while the Writers and Readers Festival has built a reputation as one of the leading literary events in Southeast Asia, with novelists, journalists and poets from dozens of countries.
Beyond these big-name events, Ubud and the surrounding villages run a constant calendar of religious and cultural celebrations: temple anniversaries, royal cremations, harvest festivals and the famous odalan ceremonies. Most are open to respectful visitors, and you only need to wander down a side street to stumble across a procession of women carrying offerings on their heads, accompanied by gamelan music.
Religion
Balinese Hinduism is a unique synthesis of indigenous animist beliefs and the more mainstream Hindu deities and practices that arrived from Java almost a thousand years ago. The complex, time-consuming rituals, from offerings to angels and demons to elaborate cremations, from the seven-monthly “birthday” ceremony every single temple hosts to Nyepi, the island-wide day of silence that marks Balinese New Year, all play out live in the temples and streets of Ubud and the surrounding villages.
Bali holds an estimated 20,000 temples, more than the population can easily visit even in a lifetime. The town of Ubud alone has over 50, ranging from grand royal complexes such as the Saraswati Temple in the centre to small family shrines tucked into back gardens. The most important nearby sites include Pura Gunung Lebah, the temple at the meeting of two rivers in central Ubud, and the famous Goa Gajah (“Elephant Cave”), a 9th-century Hindu-Buddhist sanctuary just east of town.
Art
Art, both traditional Balinese and the work created by visitors who fell in love with the island, is on display at spots from the ARMA Museum (the Agung Rai Museum of Art) to the eccentric Don Antonio Blanco Museum, the historic Puri Lukisan in central Ubud and a myriad of smaller galleries. Want to learn painting, silver-smithing, wood-carving, batik or Balinese dance? Just head to the library, Pondok Pekak, or any number of small studios around town that run hands-on workshops for visitors.
The villages around Ubud each specialise in a particular craft. Mas is the centre of Balinese wood-carving, Celuk is famous for silver and gold jewellery, and Batuan holds dozens of studios devoted to the distinctive black-ink Balinese painting style. A short scooter ride or taxi tour links them all in a single day.
Nature
The landscape of Bali has been shaped over centuries by the communal management of the rice terraces, an ingenious irrigation system known as subak that UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2012. Taking the Bali Bird Walk, hiring a local guide or simply heading off into the green will bring you in seconds from a busy, touristed street into a world where herons and egrets fish the flooded rice paddies, farmers tend their fields as they have for centuries and women in lace blouses and sarongs make daily offerings to the ancestors at their family temples.
Highlights of the area:
- Petulu Heron Village. Each evening at sunset, thousands of white herons return to roost in the trees of this small village just north of Ubud, in one of the most magical sights on the island.
- Tegalalang Rice Terraces. The most photographed rice fields in Bali, with stepped paddies climbing the hillside about 20 minutes north of Ubud.
- Campuhan Ridge Walk. A free, easy 4 km hike along a grassy ridge between two river valleys, best at sunrise or sunset and just minutes from the centre of town.
- Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. A protected forest in the heart of Ubud, home to over 1,200 long-tailed macaques and three ancient temples.
- Tukad Cepung Waterfall. A hidden waterfall about an hour from Ubud, where a single beam of sunlight pierces the cave roof at midday.
Cuisine
And then, of course, there is the food. A handful of restaurants serve traditional Balinese cuisine, and the standard improves every year. Look for specialities like bebek betutu (24-hour smoked duck), babi guling (roasted suckling pig), sate lilit (spicy minced satay wrapped around a lemongrass stick) and the rich peanut-vegetable salad gado-gado. Bumbu Bali runs popular Balinese cooking classes that begin with a morning trip to the local market. At Cafe Lotus you can dine on Balinese dishes while watching traditional dance at the temple next door, and countless places around town sell kopi luwak, the famously expensive coffee made from beans pre-digested by civet cats.
Ubud has also built a global reputation for vegan and raw cuisine. Alchemy, in the artists’ village of Penestanan up in the rice fields, majors in outstanding raw salads, smoothie bowls and even raw desserts. Sari Organik leads with farm-to-table organic food, Locavore (one of the best restaurants in Indonesia) focuses on locally grown ingredients in tasting menus, and both Kafe and Clear Cafe offer excellent vegan and raw options.
Mozaic, whose chef Chris Salans cut his teeth at three-Michelin-star restaurants in France and with Thomas Keller in the United States, offers outstanding tasting menus that have turned the restaurant into an international destination. Or take your pick from steaks, handmade pasta, gourmet gelato and sushi at spots like Rouge, Tutmak, Cafe des Artistes and Gelato Secret. The food scene in Ubud now ranks among the most varied in Southeast Asia for a town of its size.
Yoga, Wellness and Retreats
Places like The Yoga Barn, along with smaller studios such as Radiantly Alive and Ubud Yoga House, put Ubud firmly on the world yoga map. Whether you are looking for a full-blown retreat, a teacher training course or casual drop-in classes, Ubud is one of the best spots in Asia to practise. Massage, like yoga, has a long heritage on the island, and the spas of the town offer traditional Balinese and Javanese treatments alongside more classically Western staples at a fraction of the prices in Europe or North America.
Looking to finally write that novel? Choose between a simple, fan-cooled bungalow in the rice fields or an airy villa with an outdoor living room and a private pool. Long-term travellers and digital nomads will love the co-working facilities at Hubud, the bamboo-built members space on Monkey Forest Road that helped put Ubud on the digital nomad map back in the 2010s, plus newer alternatives like Outpost and Tropical Nomad.
On a journey of self-discovery? Alternative therapies from colonics to past-life regression to ozone therapy are widely available in a town where the word “conscious” appears more often alongside phrases like “sacred geometry” than as an antonym for “comatose”. Ubud takes its spiritual seekers seriously, and the standard of practitioners varies enormously, so ask around for personal recommendations before you book.
Accommodation
Ubud offers accommodation at every price point. Choose from basic fan-cooled rooms in family compounds for under $20 a night, traditional carved-stone bungalows in the rice fields, mid-range boutique hotels with infinity pools, or eco-luxury at Bambu Indah and more classical tropical luxury at Amandari, Como Shambhala Estate and Four Seasons Resort Bali at Sayan. Wherever you land, Ubud remains an amazing spot to chill out, discover Bali and maybe even, like Elizabeth Gilbert, fall in love.
Practical Tips for Visiting Ubud
- How to get there. Ubud sits about 90 minutes by car from Ngurah Rai International Airport (DPS) in southern Bali. Pre-booked airport transfers cost around $25 to $35 and save the hassle of negotiating with the airport taxi mafia.
- When to visit. The dry season runs from April to October and offers the best weather for hiking, temple visits and rice field walks. The shoulder months of April, May and September give the best balance of good weather and lower prices. The wet season (November to March) brings short heavy showers in the afternoon but greener landscapes and fewer crowds.
- Getting around. Many visitors rent a scooter for a few dollars a day, though traffic can be intimidating and accidents are common. Gojek and Grab ride-share apps work well for short trips, and private drivers can be hired for full-day tours of the surrounding villages and temples.
- Visa. Most nationalities can buy a 30-day visa on arrival at Bali airport, extendable for another 30 days at the immigration office in Denpasar. Indonesia has also rolled out an electronic visa for longer stays.
- Currency. Indonesian rupiah (IDR). ATMs are widely available, and major restaurants and hotels accept cards, but small warungs and markets still run on cash.
- Etiquette. Cover shoulders and knees when entering temples (most provide a free sarong), never step on offerings left on the pavement and always use the right hand to give and receive items.
Final Thoughts
Ubud is no secret, and the busy main streets can feel overwhelming at first. Walk a few minutes off the main road, however, and the town reveals what it has always been: a centre of Balinese art, religion and cuisine surrounded by some of the most beautiful rice landscapes on the planet. Spend a morning at a cooking class, an afternoon at the Monkey Forest, an evening watching gamelan and dance at a temple ceremony and a long lunch at a vegan cafe in the rice fields, and you start to understand why Ubud has captured the imagination of artists, writers and seekers for nearly a century. The other Bali is still here. You only have to look inland to find it.
