Galungan

On the 12th of May the so called cermony for Galungan started and which ends with Kuningan 10 days later. Galungan and Kuningan take place every 210 days according to the so called Pawukon calendender.

The legend says that ....Long time ago the horrible King Mayadenawa reigned over Bali. He was terrible, cruel and had forbidden the balinese to celebrate their gods and ancestors.

God Indra felt pity for the balinese and decided to go down to earth with his soldier and rescue them.

King Mayadenawa had great power and managed to poison the spring and there for many Balinese fell sick. Luckily Indra found out and was able to create a new spring which also had the power to cure the Balinese. It is said to be the Tampaksiring spring. Then, King Mayadenawa, hoping to evade Indra's troops, turned into a chicken (manuk), a vegetable (timbul), a palm leaf (busung), snail (susuh) and a angel (bidadari). Every single place on the island where he changed appearance kept the name of it > Desa Manuykya, Desa Timbal, Desa Blusung, Desa Penyusuhan...Having failed to fool them he finally turned into a stone.

Indra discovered him one more time and pierced the stone with magic arrow. He managed to kill King Mayadenawa, whose blood ran down the mountain and formed the river Pekerisan.

Indra cursed the river, predicting that if it was used the irrigate the rice, the grain would grow wonderfully but once cropped the rice would be covered with blood and have a smell.

Since that time, the Balinese invite the Gods and the ancestors to come dowm and celebrate Indra's victory with us every 210 days during Galungan and Kuningan.

For us we went to Negara to celebrate Galungan with Bruce family.We all got dressed and my Dad were dressed in a traditional outfit for the first time. He got especially excited when he got the so called Udeng on his head. The two petals infront representing the positive and negative. The right one, the positive, is slightly higher as it represent the positive.Then he got the first sarong, which he wraped around his hips. After that he got another shorter sarong, which is called saput. The Saput is always made of nicer fabric than the Sarong. At the times of the kings, the Balinese used it to cover the torso in front of important people.

We started with a cermony at the family tempel.

After that we went to the village temples. There are always 3 main temples in each village; Pura Desa, Pura Dalam and Pura Puseh.

My dad sat down next to Agung, which gave him the elbow every time he did something wrong.

After that the priest called my dad and told him to come and sit with him who became best buddies...