Tanah Lot

Pura Tanah Lot stands on a rock outcrop off the Tabanan coast, attributed by tradition to Dang Hyang Nirartha, the sixteenth-century priest credited with founding a chain of sea temples round Bali, each within sight of the next. At low tide you can walk across to the base, where a spring produces fresh water and a snake is kept as a guardian; the temple itself is for worshippers only. By the 1980s the rock was eroding badly enough to threaten collapse, and a Japanese-funded stabilisation programme in the 1990s replaced a substantial part of the base and surroundings with artificial rock - commonly given as about a third of what you see. It is the most visited temple in Bali and the approach is a long corridor of stalls; sunset behind the silhouette is what everyone comes for.

What you actually see

• A temple on a tidal rock - reachable on foot at low water, cut off at high.
• Artificial rock - roughly a third of the base rebuilt in the 1990s stabilisation.
• A guardian snake and spring - the fresh water and the snake kept at the base.
• Sunset silhouette - the composition the site is famous for.

When to go

April to October; late afternoon for sunset. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is extremely crowded at sunset and the approach is an unbroken run of stalls. Non-worshippers cannot enter the temple itself. Much of the rock is engineered rather than natural.

Nearby

Canggu is south-east; the Tabanan rice country is inland.