By Aditya Dev Sood with photographs by Nita Soans Sood
My knees are spread wide, my arms loose and ready, back supple and straight. Walls of green moss on black stone, flurries of fern and plant, the waving arms of trees fly by on the right. Sheets of terraced paddy step carefully down and into the ravine on the left, giving way to distant valleys, lake, and mountain. My mind is alert but high, this is not a normal kind of wakefulness, not a dream, and not slumber. It is a different, fourth kind of consciousness, a flow state, a murmuring of interior thoughts that I seem to be pulling in and out of, pitched to the drone of the bike, the winding of the road.
Nita and I had imagined this road trip through Bali a couple of years ago, the last time we were here. Then we were weighed down with luggage and hotel bookings and yearned to be able to be able to just ride out and find ourselves in a new part of the island whenever we wanted. This time, we’ve got one rucksack, now between my knees, and a smaller backpack, slung from the handlebars, and Nita has her camera bag under one arm, and we’re off and about, on the road in Bali.