Writing
One Last Push
My legs tighten. One last push. Over another bump in the gravel and the climb finally gives way, opening out into a plateau. A stretch of green rice fields ahead, the sun catching on the flooded plains. Zebra doves make their mechanical whirring sound overhead as a worker in a conical hat walks past.
My legs tighten. One last push. Over another bump in the gravel and the climb finally gives way, opening out into a plateau. A stretch of green rice fields ahead, the sun catching on the flooded plains. Zebra doves make their mechanical whirring sound overhead as a worker in a conical hat walks past.
It feels like I’m in a film. And yet, somehow it is exactly as you’d expect it to feel in a place like this. Early morning mist lifting above the tree line. Mount Rinjani sitting behind it all, fixed against a big blue sky.
Mount Rinjani looming large, Tetebatu.
We cycle through small villages where children run out to greet us. Smiling and waving with the kind of enthusiasm you don’t question at that age.
Back into the fields and another scene opens up. A narrow dirt path raised between paddies, water on either side. Palm trees line the horizon. A small thatched house sits just ahead. A woman walks along the path, and it stops feeling like a film set, to something lived.
The tempo is slow, meandering, but deliberate. Getting lost feels like the point. There’s always the sense that something might appear just around the next bend.
Tetebatu rice fields, Lombok, Indonesia.
Eventually, we reach Hideaway Coffee - a name that, for once, doesn’t overpromise. It’s tucked away along a narrow pathway off the main road. Past more rice fields, through the edge of someone’s yard, a hen and her chicks scattering as we pass.
We leave the bikes at the top of a steep hill. Where a sign announces we are at the Hideaway, yet it’s nowhere in sight (appropriately). Narrow dirt steps cut through thick greenery. A short walk, a bamboo bridge, and then it opens out into a clearing with terraced levels where the eclectically furnished café sits, blending into its natural habitat. It feels like a natural end point.
We sit with coffee and pick up a book from a nearby shelf about why humans evolved to have a brain.
I look up from the page for a bit and take it all in.
Hideaway cafe - living up to its name.
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My legs tighten. One last push. Over another bump in the gravel and the climb finally gives way, opening out into a plateau. A stretch of green rice fields ahead, the sun catching on the flooded plains. Zebra doves make their mechanical whirring sound overhead as a worker in a conical hat walks past.