Upcoming Events

Usaba Sambah & Mekare Kare

3rd - 13th June & 24th -25th June 2013

Each year in June marks festival season in the ancient, walled village of Tenganan located within an easeful drive from the Alila Manggis resort. Two colorful rituals, Usaba Sambah (June 3rd-13th) and Mekare Kare (June 24th and 25th) are open to foreign guests and considered to be as authentic of any experience to be found in Bali.

During the festive period of Usaba Sambah villagers dress up in their resplendent outfits with a focus on the virgin girls and boys in traditional dress performing formal and hypnotising trance dances. If there are sufficient marriageable girls in the village they will sit on the seats of a primitive Ferris Wheel turned by the foot power of village men. The meticulously dressed young women, while looking slightly demure, peer below taking note of the dusty and noisy spectacle below and the boys engaged in a ferocious war dance, dueling each other with prickly panadanus leaf "whips," encouraged by the warlike like sounds and rhythm of kare music.

Tenganan's narrow streets are a colourful and engaging spectacle exhibiting a way of life unchanged for centuries such as the handmade and distinctive double-ikat cloth for sarongs believed to protect their owners from sickness and ill-fate. The Bali Aga villages of East Bali, are home to some of the island’s first inhabitants. The true significance of East Bali inhabitants lies in their peculiar and traditional ways of life. This becomes clear if you visit the area in June when you will almost certainly witness a series of ceremonies that throw entire communities into religious frenzy.

Prices are subject to 21% government tax & service charge
For reservations and enquiries, please contact us at +62 363 410 11 OR email: manggis@alilahotels.com