NungNung Waterfall

Nungnung Waterfall, Bali: 500 Steps and the Best Sweat I've Had on Holiday Six in the morning, and I'm on the back of a scooter with a photographer friend who lives in Bali, heading out of Ubud toward Nungnung. An hour later my backside has basically gone numb. Nobody warns you how long an hour on a scooter actually feels. Then the car park, and then the real work starts. Five hundred-odd steps straight down into the gorge. We were aiming to be at the bottom before eight, and we just about made it. You hear the waterfall before you see all of it, and then you round the last bend and the spray just hits you, this wall of mist coming off the water. It's loud and it's a lot, in a good way. Something about standing there got washed through me along with everything else — all the tiredness from the ride and the stairs just went. The steps will get you, one way or another They're always damp down there, and damp means moss, and moss on concrete steps is basically a water slide. Wear shoes with actual grip. We watched a tour group come through around nine and someone went straight down on the wet stone. Nobody was hurt, more embarrassed than anything, but it made the point for us. Going down took maybe fifteen minutes. Coming back up was a different story — twenty-five to thirty-five minutes depending who you ask in our group, and by the top we were all breathing like we'd run somewhere. Bring water. Go slow. There's no prize for getting up fast, and the steps aren't going anywhere. You will get wet, there's no way around it Standing anywhere near the base, the spray reaches you whether you want it to or not. Pack a dry change of clothes, something waterproof for your phone, and a towel, because by the time you're back at the top you'll want all three. Go early Eight to ten in the morning is the move. The light's better before ten, it's cooler, and you miss most of the tour buses. We went again more recently and it only took us about forty-five minutes round trip, start to finish, because we'd learned the rhythm of it by then — unhurried on the way down, not looking for the bottom, just walking, and then suddenly the actual falls are right there and it's stunning. Properly stunning. Loud, cold water, and barely anyone else around. Everything in Bali seems to be a long drive from everything else, but this one's worth the hour. The climb back up is genuinely tiring, no point pretending otherwise, and the upside is there's no queue for any of it — you're not sharing the view with fifty other people trying to get the same photo.