For 10 years I’ve dreamed of this. Ten years ago, ever since I first came to Indonesia as a naïve 17-year-old high school graduate I imagined myself here, roaring down this long road to Grajagan, the bare essentials strapped onto my sputtering single-cylinder trail bike.

Two boards: a purple 6’1” Jim Banks twin fin and a radical 6’9 10-channel Phil Myers singlet. A basic first-aid kit. A few clothes and a computer and some camera gear. And, most importantly, a pocket-sized Indonesian dictionary; language, a window into the soul of a people.

For the next six months I will ride this bike solo about the archipelago. I’m searching for the perfect swells endemic to this country, but riding waves is not the only objective of my trip. Surfing is the catalyst for an adventure that gives me license to explore a culture and interact with one of the most diverse and optimistic peoples on this earth.

The road opens up through villages and rice paddies, late afternoon sun stream-ing through the jungle canopy. This is the Alas Purwo National Park. It is an important place in Javanese mythology. Meaning ancient forest, it is where the Javanese believe that land first emerged from theIndian Ocean and a place many believe still to be haunted.

It is also home to an important place in surfing mythology. G-Land, an Indonesian surfing Mecca. That fabled left-hand erreeling down a divine two-kilometre stretch of reef on the edge of a jungle where tigers and leopards and wild buffalo still roam. Tubes to transport you to a different dimension. Waves so perfect and beautiful you can’t help but stop and ask yourself, ‘have I died and gone to heaven?’Every surfer has heard of the place, and now I’m seeing it with my own eyes for the first time.I find lodgings in one of the four surf camps overlooking the break. Government regulations mean that in the current political situation, there can be no more development in the national park. The prices reflect this exclusivity. $100 USD per night buys me a basic bungalow room, including three meals and two beers per day.

Laying eyes on the wave for the first time, it is nowhere near as perfect as I imagined. It sputters down the reef, impossibly fast through some parts, big crumbling wedges appearing in the wave face ahead, other sections fizzling out into deep water. Waves break outside, inside, up the reef, down the reef. As if it isn’t hard enough to figure out, there is a crowd of 100-plus surfers on the first day of this advertised swell. Rapacious Aussies, Californians, Brazilians, Europeans, all competing to try and convert their bucks into tube time. Can you put a monetary value on the wave of your life? Here, it’s gotta be worth a good few grand.

Beyond the pack, an older surfer sits way outside on an orange 7’8” Tokoro gun.Seventy-four-year-old, Larry McGraw, is a dentist from Oahu and has been here every season since 1987, including two seasons during COVID, where he was for a time the only surfer in the camp. He sits and waits for his waves. He knows just how critical patience and luck and wave selection are out here. In a four-hour session he rides only five waves.

“It’s a wave you really have to get to under-stand. There are so many variables. Ten feet of tide means you’re surfing an entirely different part of the reef on different tides, and the wave does different things on different swell directions. It’s so tricky, and you can really see the surfers who have put in the time and developed a relationship with the wave,” he says.

In all of his stints Larry has seen many of the top professionals surfing here, but he credits West Australian Jeffrey ‘Camel’ Goulden as the best.

“He would get two completely different snapped boards and Frankenstein them together, then offset the fins. He would paddle out on the biggest, gnarliest days, where it was washing through and the risk far outweighed the reward, and still find the nugs.”

“He’s gotta be one of the best soul tube riders I have ever seen.”

The day after the peak of the swell there is amass exodus from the camp. The lineup is uncrowded, the waves still four-to-six feet and glistening. I start to get a better read on the incoming swells, riding one long deep tube on the end section that makes the expense and the long ride across and the crowds and the hassle all worthwhile.

On a flat day I wander along the edge of the reef and into the bay. On the edge of the jungle is a hut made from bamboo poles and old canoe paddles lashed together, the roof a double layer of tarpaulin. This is the fishing camp of 73-year-old Pak Samon. He was one of the first from nearby village, Grajagan, to begin venturing here in search of better fishing grounds.

The Javanese are a highly superstitious people, and this region is renowned as apowerful centre of witchcraft and super-natural happenings. In 1998, over 200 people suspected of being duken santat, or black magic practitioners were massacred in a series of revenge killings. While many of those extreme beliefs have been pushed underground, some, including Pak Samon believe this area to be especially haunted.

“There are ghosts. Here in Alas Purwo, almost everybody believes it. Sometimes you see them as a normal person, some-times you see them as a shadow a little bit bigger than a human. It is the belief of the Javanese people. We believe that there are spirits in the jungle, and people have held those beliefs for a long time,” says Pak Samon.

“Everyone has different views, but in my view, the ghost comes from inside you

From inside your heart. I have seen the shadows, heard the voices.”

Walking back to the camp, I cross paths withBrendan Lyss, a 51-year-old former under-cover police officer who has been riding a155 N-Max scooter around Indonesia thepast two years. For Brendan, G-Land is a refuge, a salvation.

As an undercover cop Brendan was forced to live a lie. He lived that lie for long enough that it became the truth, and he became one of the criminals he was pretending to be. Confused with who he was and plagued with the guilt of betraying the criminals he befriended, he spiralled into psychological decline and drug addiction. After suing the police 10 years ago, he took his money and came to Indonesia; travel and surfing proving to be the panacea that medication and psychologists could not offer him.

“Being exposed to the elements, the power of the waves and the weather and working with those things, it’s a very healing thing.It was the best therapy. It did for me what the psychologist and the psychiatrists and rehab and stuff couldn’t. That was my rehab, I guess,” he says.“I feel I’ve cured myself through travel. I feel amazing. I feel really privileged to be ableto do this, and now I like my own company.I don’t have any demons I’m battling with.It’s just so liberating. And then seeing people who don’t have much and they’re just so welcoming and so happy and so friendly, pleased to meet you, to share a coffee with you.

“I feel so free, buzzing around on my motor-bike with my surfboards, not knowing whereI’m going to stop the next day.”

As the swell disappears, Brendan loads his bike with his surfboards and his backpack and rides off into the jungle. I follow closely behind, out of the dense wilderness and back into beeping, dusty streets of Banyu-wangi. Across the Bali Strait, continuing on,east into the unknown.

See that little white thing bobbing out there?Is that a white cap? Surely, but no, it’s a littlefishing canoe! What the hell is it doing here,bobbing around 20 miles out to sea in theAlas Strait, one of the fastest moving bodiesof water in the world? Eight knots of current,water moving so fast it’ll stand up and makewaves against opposing wind or swell.Pak Anuddin points to the boat.“He knows what he’s doing. He’ll work withit and use it to get home,” he says.

Pak Anuddin knows the importance of working with the ocean. You can’t beat it, only join it, he’s come to understand in the last 11 years travelling the world working a cargo ship. Right now, he’s on his way back to Bima, Sumbawa, to spend two months off with his family before heading back out to sea for the next 10 months.

Like the rest of the ferry passengers, he’s crossing this strait from Bali to Lombok for work or family, these bringing the same sense of fulfilment and purpose to the Indonesian people that I’m here seeking in surf-ing. All of us, on a pilgrimage of sorts. Ardi, heading back to Sumbawa after selling 20cattle in Jakarta. Rizki and Fendi, a married couple travelling from West Java to the wife’svillage in Sumbawa for the first time in fiveyears.

Me, on my way to one of the best waves in the world.

Desert Point Delirium

Compared to the mysticism and luxury of G-Land, Desert Point is a surfing ghetto. Digs are in raised huts, the roofs and walls thatched crudely with alang-alang. Some leak when it rains; 200k rupiah a night here buys you a bed on a concrete pad, a toilet you have to flush with bucket and scoop, anda trickling little one-inch PVC pipe shower.There is no fan and only one naked, hard-bright lightbulb; everything runs off the diesel generator chugging away beside the cow paddock down back.

It’s a small price to pay when you see the quality of the wave. Glistening six-to-eight-foot tubes reeling the entire 300m length of the reef, hypnotising everyone in the beach-front warungs. A Mexican wave of grunts and hollers follow each set wave down the point, ending in riotous cheering at the mostly Brazilian occupied warung in front of The Grower end-section.

As the first proper swell of the season fills in,The Grower builds to eight-to-10-foot plus.A handful of crew are paddling it, including Australian slab-hunter Kipp Caddy, who’s come here with eyes specifically on this section.

“It’s really heavy,” he says.

“It’s kinda deep down there and there’s so much water in the wave that you don’t have to worry too much about hitting the reef. It’s more drowning material. Kinda like Puerto, where it seems to kind of keep you in the impact zone. It’s a psycho wave. Good training for Pipe.”

Kipp rides a handful of closeouts and one long, deep tube on his backhand, before turning his attention back up the point.

Up there, the vibe in the lineup is intense, the crowd on par with Pipeline and Snap-per Rocks; 100 surfers jostling for position in the small take-off area, sometimes seven or eight people taking off on the one wave.To snag a set wave requires you to adopt an animalistic sort of approach. Rules of the jungle. Every other surfer is an enemy.

Sometimes, the politics of the lineup spill on to land. I watch a near collision between a Hawaiian and a Brazilian surfer. After an apology from the Hawaiian, all seems to be resolved, but later, the Brazilian and a group of four friends arrive at the Hawaiians camp and confront him at his table. There is a tense stand-off. A local intervenes, defusing the Brazilian group.

Each day passes in a blur of tubes and me-goreng and extra-joss and Sampoerna cigarettes and coconuts. Time seems to take on a different dimension in Indonesia. Sebentar lagi, one more moment, can mean months. Kemarin, yesterday, years in the past, besok, tomorrow, years ahead. Here, at Desert Point, time transcends that dimension again. Twenty-second tubes that distort the reality of time and space, everything slowing to a standstill, minutes, hours, years, lifetimes slipping by.

For one man here at Desert Point, 15 years have passed by in these tubes. John Kellyfirst came here in 2008, and he’s been here ever since, raising his 10-year-old son, Samudera Hindia (meaning Indian Ocean in Indonesian) in spinning tropical tubes and swaying coconut palms. “Even before I first came here I felt connected to the place. Just the feel of the land and the slow life. Growing food, living by the seasons and the tides. And sure, there’s the wave too. That’s obviously a big drawcard.” As a Westerner living here permanently, John is something of an outsider in the community. He lives on the fringes of the village and surf camps in a traditional Sasakstyle house and says while there are many smiling faces and genuine, kind-hearted people here, there is also an underlying sentiment of distrust and dislike of Westerners among the local people.

“It is partly religious, and because of the way they see us. A lot of people here just see all Westerners as lacking respect for their religious beliefs. You’re kind of just a source of income. It makes it kind of hard living here full-time,” he says.

“You just gotta go all Jimi Hendrix, eyes to the sky. It wears you down sometimes, butyou just gotta accept it. It’s part of the cost of living here.”

Each day, the swell rises and fades with the vagaries of tide. On the slack part of the tides it disappears almost completely, before climbing back up to overhead, double overhead, triple overhead within 40minutes, sending a flurry of surfers scram-bling into the lineup. Out behind the break, small wooden perahu (fishing boats) follow it in, sails hoisted and trawling out behind the break. Both groups, scouring the ocean for the fruits that arrive and disappear with the tide.