Black sand that has healing power, why you should not whistle while strolling down a beach at night, Bali's most beautiful and least-visited rice terraces, a very special gift to take home from Bali, a workshop where Batiks are created with unique natural dyes, a place to petition the spirits for a baby, the flute-playing pigeons of Ubud, an enchanting village of traditionally styled bamboo roofs, a haunting reunion of some of Bali's most outrageous demons, one of the world's best unofficial street art exhibitions, a tree it is impossible to plant, an ancient fertility statue with "more than the usual quota of penises", a mysterious breed of cattle, a village of the deaf, a miniature version of Java's Unesco-listed Borobudur, fantastic tranced bull races, the world's most spectacular traditional fishing craft, an architectural wonder of Bali's Christian heartland, Bali's only colonial-era rubber plantation. Bali offers countless opportunities to step off the beaten path and is home to any number of well-hidden treasures that are revealed only to residents and travelers who are ready to explore. Secret Bali An unusual guide is an indispensable resource for those who think they already know Bali or would like to discover its hidden places, taking you far from the crowds and the usual clichés. Six nervewracking hours dangling from a frayed cable in a Venezuelan cablecar sent Mark Eveleigh into freefall on a career as travel writer, specialising in adventure. He taught himself Indonesian in preparation for an expedition he led into Central Borneo's "valley of the spirit world" (which became the subject for his first book, Fever Trees of Borneo). Mark fell in love with Bali when he spent a year living with a Balinese family in 2003 and for more than five years now his writing base has been in the island's "wild west". Although he's covered assignments in more than 100 Indonesian islands (for BBC, CNN, Esquire, National Geographic Traveller and others), Mark still describes the remoter parts of Bali as "a forgotten paradise".