Bike Life - Bali
I’m a 22 year old Photographer from Liverpool, England and have been living in Bali, getting to know the bike scene here for the last 5 months.
My first time in Bali was late last year when my visa for Australia expired. The plan was to break up that long flight back to England, where I was visiting over Christmas. I’d done zero research about the island and had absolutely no idea what to expect when I landed.
I arrived quite late, got a few hours of sleep in, and then decided to explore the area the next day. That’s when I stumbled across “Malamadre Motorcycles”.
Not realizing that there would be much of a bike scene here, I went in to see what they do and had a quick chat with the owner... That’s pretty much when I fell in love with Bali.
He was explaining that in 2018, Bali had hosted the biggest gentleman's ride in the world and that there are custom bike fabricators essentially on every corner over here.
I mentioned to him that I was here for a month and didn’t really have any plans, so I proposed a bit of a partnership with him - he lets me ride his bikes and I deliver some images for him in return.
He quickly warmed to the idea and I ended up working with him for the whole month. Long story short, I got to ride badass bikes every day!
In that month I explored the whole island and did in fact fall in love with it, so I decided Bali was a good home base for me... Now I live here.
I’ve met a lot of awesome people within the bike scene and have been on countless bike adventures, which are always a wild time.
One trip that I’ll never forget though, is when three photographer/videographer friends and I decided to go on a 2 day trip to a place called “Kintamani”. This is the volcanic side of the island with crazy lava fields, beautiful scenery, and the fun twisties… until you hit the gravel!
A couple of brands got involved and we ended up shooting for “PandoMoto”, “John Doe Clothing”, and an Indonesian helmet brand “RSVhelmets”, who rented a 795cc Ducati Monster for me (which is way too big for Bali roads).
We set out from Canggu at 4am and arrived at the volcano for sunrise, where we shot a few photos. Then we spotted an old quarry in the distance and decided to go check that out next. Unfortunately, I had to leave the Ducati back on the road. One of the other guys had rented a cheap, custom Yamaha Scorpio with half worthy tires, so we decided to give that a good seeing to, in the name of some good photos.
An hour of sliding around in the dirt and several adequate shots later, we decided it was time for breakfast and were just about to head out. Nick wanted to give it just one last send… and pushed it just that little bit too far. Throwing him over with his right hand, gravely crest, and straight into the floor; great advertising for the helmet brand (he survived), but wearing only a t-shirt to showcase the clothing brand, left him nicely cut up. Because we were in the middle of nowhere, there weren’t any hospitals or anything to get him properly cleaned up, so we ended up stopping at this little shop (more of a shed with a few drinks) and asked if they could help.
They didn’t speak a word of english but insisted that the dish soap and a bucket of murky old water they had there, was just what Nick needed - We had nothing else and decided that this was better than nothing so we gave her the nod and watched as she proceeded to vigorously SCRUB Nick’s arm to get all of the gravel, dust and sand out of his surprisingly deep wounds. He’s a big lad though so he soldiered through it, covered it up and we went for breakfast before continuing our trip and enjoying the rest of the beautiful Kintamani roads.
