The trails & tribulations of living aside a jungle on the island of the Gods - Bali

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 :)