Prior the Bali visit in November 2015, I’ve probably watched “Eat Pray Love” about a million times. And before that, I’ve always had this fascination about getting lost in a place that I have very little knowledge about. It was like a sense of surrender, surrender to my daily routine in the urban jungle that I’ve been living in for so long. I was like I am done! Done with the stress, and done by the fact that to connect and socialize with people I personally doesn’t even care about. And it was time to just take care of myself.

There is something special about traveling in a remote area. We stayed at La Joya, at Jimbaran, away from the noise and it is located on a cliff and facing the ocean. Every morning I woke up to the sound of the ocean wave hitting the shore (though I had not heard the dolphins clipping) and had a lot to time to look beyond the horizon, and that was where I felt completely alone, separated from reality and found serenity. As I looked into the ocean while my thoughts were generating and throwing those negativities into it, and the ocean was like a massive mirror that it reflected everything I’ve projected into it back to where it belonged. It was a session of a self-revaluation. I felt so calm and sure, as I’ve finally understood where those problems were originated.

“You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love.

During this Bali trip, I did eat a lot, but did not pray at all, nor did love come to me at all. Though I have learnt something valuable from it all. All it takes is your good friends, white tank tops  & a villa on a cliff.

PHOTOGRAPHY // MATT, EROS & CARLA