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Religious Festivals

Religious festivals include odalan, which signifies the anniversary of a temple's founding. These festivals last a couple of days to a week. Temples are beautifully bedecked with flowers, palm leaves, flags and bamboo towers, complete with noisy parades, food offerings, and prayers that add religious fervor to the festive ambience.

Melasti, another religiously inclined festival, is a purification festival held the day before Nyepi. On Melasti, villagers will dress in their finest and make their way to the sea or holy springs. They would carry umbrellas, offerings or flowers, and fruit and sacred statues. The statues are affectionately washed with water, and pigs would be sacrificed by holy men as offerings to their gods. This festival must be carried out amid the din of gamelan and drums and lots of merry shouting. All must then fall silent the following day on Nyepi.

Nyepi is a festival that marks the beginning of a new lunar year and usually falls during the spring equinox (late March or early April). On this day, everyone in Bali including tourists must remain silent. No one is allowed to work, travel or partake in any indulgences. Visitors are advised to observe this custom and to stay within their lodgings for the day. It may seem like a day is wasted, but the previous night's festivities would have sapped substantial energy and spirit to make up for the day of stillness. It is believed that evil spirits will leave the island, thinking that the place is uninhabited due to the complete stillness.

Galungan is another festival related to religion. It is observed in the eleventh week of the 210th day in the Balinese calendar and celebrates the creation of our world. Bali's most significant annual event, locals will spend the day visiting family, friends and neighbors decked in their finest and indulge in heavy feasting.

Ten days after Galungan is Kuningan. This festival commemorates the end of the holiday season. On this occasion, ancestors are worshipped and honored with celebrations held at the water temple Tampaksiring, along with other events at Bangli and Ubud.

The restoration of balance between good and evil is also commemorated. Eka Dasa Rudra is the island's most important festival and is originally held every hundred years. It is now being revised to hold the festival more frequently and the next one is yet to be announced.

Non-Religious Festivals and Holidays

If you are in Bali between July and October, you will have the opportunity to experience the Negara bull races. The pampered bulls are spruced up with accessories, hitched in pairs to makeshift chariots, and steered by jockeys who combine their riding skills and tail twisting to induce maximum performance.

Then there is also the rice harvest festival, which is dedicated to the rice god Dewi Sri. This is a blessed season for the villages and the entire place will be repainted and decorated with flags. An atmosphere of happiness pervades. Small straw rice-god dolls are placed throughout the fields and villages as a tribute.

Indonesia's Independence Day falls on August 17, when the Republic of Indonesia achieved independence from the Dutch.

Balinese ceremonies are normally held during late afternoons or evenings when the day is cooler. They also hold firm to the belief that the island is owned by the supreme god Sanghyang Widhi, and has been handed down to the Balinese in sacred trust. To show their appreciation, the people fill their waking hours with symbolic activities and worship. If you see a procession of women garbed in traditional wear, carrying small bowls or balancing towering offerings on their heads, or a group of batik-clad men with headcloths, just put on a shirt, grab your camera and mingle with the crowd - you will always be welcomed.

The Bali Arts Festival
June 13, 2009 to July 11, 2009

The Bali Arts Festival is a full month of daily performances, handicraft exhibitions and other related cultural and commercial activities during which literally the whole of Bali comes to the city to present its offerings of dance, music and beauty. On display are trances from remote mountain slopes, forgotten or recently revived village dances, food and offering contests, classical palace dances, stars of Balinese stage, odd musical performances, "kreasi baru" (new creations) from the dance schools of Denpasar, as well as contemporary choreography and dance companies from other islands and from abroad.

It is a month long revelry that perhaps no other place in the world can put up on such a low budget as the Balinese. Not only is their traditional culture alive and well, but they have a tremendous pride in it.

It begins in the villages, where the seka or cultural groups are selected and organized at the regency level, vie with each other to perform the Arts Festival and thus display in front of a large audience the uniqueness of their village of birth and resting place of their ancestors.

The Bali Arts Festival is the Denpasar cultural event of the year, perhaps it would no be too far fetched to suggest that it is the cultural event of Indonesia. The festival is thus a unique opportunity to see local village culture both "live" and at first hand. Tourists are warmly welcomed. courtesy of www.balicalendar.com

International Womens Tennis Tournament
4 - 8 November Commonwealth Bank Tournament Of Champions 2009

Road To Bali: Players Joining the Race Towards Glory in Bali, 4-8 November 2009 at The Westin Resort, Nusa Dua Bali.