The story of our Bali trekking guide would make you rethink your life

So like most of you would have known by now, our Singapore Travel Blogging team took a trip to the beautiful island of Bali, Indonesia recently.

As one of our R&R activities in the second week of our Trip, we decided to do some trekking and hike up Mt Batur because of all the rave reviews about how beautiful the view is from the top.

So we met our driver at around 230am in the morning and he drove us to the base camp of Mt Batur where we had our breakfast and did our final preparations to conquer the 5km journey up the 1,717m high Mt Batur.

Armed with nothing but a torchlight in the pitch black wee hours of the morning, we started our trail up the mountain not knowing whats ahead, where to turn, what to look out for and just blindly followed our guide, which is just as well cause he was just about as far we could see in the dimly lit mountain.

He was a really really friendly guy and spoke pretty good English so we, less those who could barely catch their breathe *cough Nicole *cough, started talking to pass time cause there wasnt much to do except walking throughout the 3 hours long journey up.

He shared with us things about Bali where to go, things to see etc and as the conversation got deeper and more personal, he explained that he was 29 and completing his Uni. He told us that the total climb was a 5km up and 5km down journey and on peak seasons, he treks up and down every single day to guide tourist like us. But because the guides work on a rolling basis, I.e each guide is assigned a number and move out in the particular order as tourist arrive, there are days during the off peak season where he would wake up and come to base camp but because of the lack of number of visitors, he just spends his time at base camp doing nothing but wait for everyone to come back.

But what really touched my heart was when the topic of massaging came up, I think we were talking about getting Balinese massage and stuff and he was like “I love massage, but i dont have the time for it”

He shared that he only sleeps 2 hours every day and that once hes done with guiding us down (around 12pm), he would take his motorcycle, the primary transport the local use, and take a 3 hour long ride up to school, before spending his day in school and taking another 3 hour ride back when hes done, eat, rest and wake up a few hours later to do the exact same thing and guide new tourist up the mountain.  “I get to sleep more on Sundays“, he shared. When asked, he explains that by sleeping more, he meant getting to sleep for 6 hours on Sundays.

As we continued trekking up, his words continued to linger in my mind. It got me thinking about how back at home, we would complain about school and here’s a guy that travels over 6hrs daily just to get his education done, all whilst working as a guide and doing a 10km hike every morning.

It reminds me of a phrase of “If you want something bad enough, nothings impossible”. I guess living in comfort has blinded a lot of us from realizing just how lucky we truly are.

It was a pity that we didnt get to take a picture with him, but you’ll probably be able to see him in our Bali videos once Im done editing them. But either way, the life lesson he taught me that morning as we were trekking up is one that im not about to forget in the days to come.