Step ashore Lombok island for the first time, and you could be forgiven for feeling a strong sense of deja vous. This is a common first impression of the relatively undeveloped island to the east of Bali, but as Jaya H. has discovered, there’s much more to Lombok than first meets the eye.

My father fell in love with Indonesia years ago, and soon honed in on Bali when it was opened up to tourists after a long period of hardship in the late 1960s. He would come back from his jaunts through Asia with stories of grass huts under coconut trees, and a fabulously colourful and unique culture.

I first accompanied him with my family a little more than ten years later, when cheap Kuta packages were already popular and Bali was no longer considered an unlikely tourist destination. Warungs selling milkshakes and pancakes exclusively for tourists were already lining the streets, and downtown discos were doing a roaring trade, but there was still something very simple and unaffected about the island. Kuta beach was a short stroll down a dirt path through coconut trees, and the roads were nothing but simple dust tracks in the dry season turning to mud slides in the wet. Outside of Kuta, life went on as it had for many generations, and it was possible to feel that you had entered another dimension in time.

For many visitors to Indonesia, Bali has continued to be the main attraction. There is no other place in Indonesia, nor around the world, in which a dominant spirituality is strongly infused through every aspect of daily life. But now that Bali has developed into the thriving commercial success she now is, Lombok’s own subtle charms are becoming more apparent and more attractive to visitors.

Deja vous
When I arrived in Lombok for the first time, not so long ago, I had the strong impression that I had felt this way before. Not that I saw anything to jog my memory, nor even that I had experiences to remind me of something or somewhere else. The feeling of deja-vous was, somehow, much deeper.

I felt the haunting mystique, the original Indonesian attraction, here, in the space and the quiet simplicity of a centuries-old blend of cultures and traditions. My first photo-imprint images were of descending through a heavy clouded sky in a light plane, being confronted by densely clad volcanic slopes, and gliding onto a simple runway with a small box positioned to the side for departures and arrivals. My first impressions... a more compact version of the island I’d left behind - the tropical foliage, the dominant volcanoes, similar buildings and people. My first verbalised response, "Hey, there’s a Kuta here, too!" That cemented these intial impressions in my mind, confirming the eery feeling of deja vous.

The comparisons I immediately made are actually very common, which has been both a blessing and a curse for Lombok as she matures and develops as an independent tourist destination in her own right. These sorts of comparisons are, in fact, perfectly understandable when you take into account a number of different factors. The physical similarities, for starters, are quite striking. Lombok is only slightly smaller and has the same basic geographical makep... with a string of volcanic mountains lining the northern edge of each island... and she holds just a slightly smaller population (although a higher population density).

What’s more, that population includes a well-established Balinese community, with all the essential accompanying Hindu temples and arts and crafts. And, of course, the presence of a Balinese community contributes strongly to the distinctive Balinese flavour, particularly in the west of the island.

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