Sawah: Rural Indonesia through the lens

DSC_1704-29PIN ITA few days after Christmas we had some of our favourite friends make the big drive down from the city to hang out with us for the day, this trip wasn’t just our usual monthly catch up where the kids hang and we drink tea and chat… it was, instead, a goodbye. My beautiful friend Emma and her family are moving back to NZ, and it’s an awesome thing for all of them and lucky for us too because now we have the perfect reason to visit that gorgeous country. A few months ago, Emma and I and our kids went exploring in Bali – which was an off the cuff suggestion that we turned into a beautiful reality.

Emma and I often sat side by side in our little thatched cottage, watching the sun dip behind the coconut palms, tropical fruit or cups of warm tea balanced between our knees, three sleeping children amongst the mosquito nets around us. We sat there every night and talked for hours about the world, about our lives, about everything in between. It was a very special thing, having the gift of friendship on my travels – for usually it’s Bo and I, on our own. To share that with someone else is a gift that shouldn’t be treated lightly, and it’s something I’ll treasure for a long, long time.

There is little doubt that Indonesia is my spiritual homeland, with so much connection to love and loss and self realisation, there is something very powerful that happens to me when I am ingrained in that culture. So for me, the most essential element of any trip to Indonesia is to find myself in a village, ideally right in the heart of a sawah (rice field). I find that when I travel here something in me is cracked wide open – as if for the first time in a long time I am completely and totally alive. That in itself is something that I learned from living in an indonesian village for so many years, something that from time to time I’m able to bring into my every day life.

And it’s the biggest gift of all.

To be present. To be alive. To be truly awake.

DSC_0154PIN IT DSC_0177PIN IT DSC_0288PIN IT DSC_0405PIN IT DSC_0470PIN IT DSC_0616PIN IT DSC_0741PIN IT DSC_0843PIN IT DSC_0870PIN IT DSC_0890PIN IT DSC_1263PIN IT DSC_1516PIN IT DSC_1522PIN IT DSC_1532PIN IT DSC_9455PIN IT DSC_9496PIN IT DSC_9557PIN IT DSC_9571PIN IT DSC_9604PIN ITThis is the last series of photographs from our trip. From the warmth of south western Australian summer, comes photographs from the end of dry season, in rural Bali, Indonesia.

With love. x

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  • January 4, 2016 - 10:20 pm

    Ecky - Beautiful photos as always Sash, but the correct one is Sawah with h not sawa.ReplyCancel

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