I was very lucky to stumble upon this special eco community just south of Ubud in central Bali where I have been living for seven months now with my partner & baby. Here they collect & filter the rain water for drinking & household use, and after going through a 'grey water' system all this rainwater is then used for the land. They have solar to heat the water when it's cold. Our toilets separate urine & feces which is treated and used as fertiliser. They grow their own organic food and have enough land to live exclusively from their produce with plenty left to sell locally. It is still a work in progress but it won't be long before they are 100% off grid. And their location ain't so bad either, situated on the side of The Petanu River valley looking out across miles of untouched land.
Their intention is to train the local farmers how to grow & sell organic produce, which is so important now that pesticides & chemicals are becoming the norm. Inevitable when the farmers have no choice while trying to keep up with competition. Ten years ago EVERYTHING here was organic. Today Monsanto appear to have a firm handle on proceedings.
Our home is the one of the three with the lighter coloured (rain collecting) roofs, the one closest to the valley edge :) The picture below is our home at night, the starts forever shining bright without any light pollution.
It's always so warm in Bali, having a house with very few walls is a total blessing! The wind can pass through it :)
Geckos of all sizes live in our roof rafters and I have been pooped on more than once. Cheeky buggers.
My son Esteban is 16months old and already living the kind of life that few of us do. He is constantly in nature, exploring new places & this is already his fourth country of residence. His vocab of around 100 words is a mixture of three different languages: English, French and Indonesian.
...and he knows exactly where bananas come from!
As a traveller I have not had an office for over three years now, so being able to unpack my kit and have a consistent (relatively) private room has been a total godsend & enabled me to push my creativity to the limits.
Our bedroom, bathroom & office are the only actual 'rooms' in the house. I love being surrounded by all this wood everywhere. Our bedroom windows look directly out to the valley,
giving us the most beautiful chorus of nature, especially at night.
All around us is abundance and life in so many wonderful forms
The macaque monkeys generally don't bother us, but this guy is the alpha male (I call him Big Daddy) and he ain't scared of me at all! I managed to film my first encounter with him here
We have a community shared infinity eco pool,
complete with fish & frogs. No chemicals here!
I even swim at night, watching the stars with the fish nibbling at my feet :)
There are still 3 plots of land available to buy here. If anyone is interested, let me know asap and I'll get you some prices. I believe they accept bitcoin!
Hope you enjoyed this post everyone. Keep following for more. I shoot pictures every day... and from now on, Steemit is the place for me :)
Awesome, this is beautiful. I look forward to your next pictures.
@steempowerwhale 🐳
🌞 upvoting your lifetime dreams!
Thanks bro. Appreciated :)
Don't feed monkeys, noted, thank you lol; good luck with him. Photos warm the heart, thank you for posting.
Thanks for the comment. Thankfully Big Daddy seems to have moved on and we don't see him any more. Living in such a beautiful place it's not hard to get magical shots. Wait till you see the motion control time-lapse I've been shooting here...
amazing - those stars at night must be mesmerising - what a wonderful place to live and raise your son. Hopefully the Balinese will have the sense to get rid of Monsanto, poison!! - lookforward to seeing more posts
Thanks. Yes, the stars certainly are mesmerising. Though I am in the process of correcting my vision currently (https://steemit.com/health/@samstonehill/natural-vision-correction-1-an-introduction-a-steemit-exclusive) which means I'm not wearing my glasses, so for the next month things are going to be a little blurry! But in 60 days I will see them clearly without the lenses! Yay :)
going to read this now - my husband and i wear 'magnifiers' for reading and notice we use them a lot more now - see something like this in the Secret/Power books . Thanks :)
so nice to see more awesome posts about Bali as the usual ones here. I will read tomorrow morning again. Really interesting !
Thanks. Yes, it's a really forward-minded community here. Come visit!!! So much to learn about how we can help this beautiful yet troubled island...
I live here since 16 years and I would
Love to visit you but I decided to be in Europe again for a while enjoying some snow for a change 😜 My daughter moved to Vienna . I just miss her .
Wow, just wow. Breath taking!!!!
Thank you for the comment. I use a special technique called HDR to get those really rich textures... and plenty more where they came from :)
Nice posting, nice picture. Thank you for promoting Bali :)
Thank you and it is my pleasure to promote this wonderful island. Though it needs our help at this time. Tourism is moving very fast, creating potential problems for the future. But this eco community in which I live are working very hard towards helping with this situation. Education is key :)
wow the colours of nature there are just amazing
They sure are. Though a little bit photography trickery helps a bit :) I use HDR photography to enhance the colours :)