Lombok Bali of 70s (Indonesia Series Part-I)

In our second visit to Indonesia, we added Lombok to our itinerary. Since we had some free nights with Oberoi Hotels, the key reason that led to this choice was presence of an Oberoi property on this island.

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After a short layover in Singapore, we landed in Bali. Though the flying time was just 8 hours and the layover around 2.5 hours, we decided to spend the night in Bali as we had flown through the night and were tired because of lack of proper sleep.

We were booked on a Blue Waters fast boat to Lombok the next morning. It took 45 minutes to reach the jetty. The check in process was hassle-free and our bags were loaded into the baggage hold of the boat. Once the boat left Bali, I decided to park myself on the top deck since it promised a better vantage for photography. The boat crew also mentioned that since the sea was calm, I could take my camera up as seawater splashes would be unlikely.

We were travelling east from Bali, and soon, the mist covered mountains of North East Bali started to provide us company to the left of the boat. While we were enjoying the scene, suddenly a roar went up in the boat. We had company! A large dolphin family had decided to escort our boat!

Our boat made its first stop at Gili Trawangan. The etymology of this name is two indonesian words - gili = small island and trawangan = derived from terowongan that means tunnel. The island has a tunnel from the WWII era when it was under Japanese occupation.