If you have only been to Seminyak and Ubud, you have not yet been to Bali. You have been to the version of Bali that the twenty-first century assembled for the purpose of receiving visitors. It is a version of considerable pleasures. It is not the island.

Amankila is the island.

Located in Karangasem, the easternmost and most traditional of Bali’s regencies — ninety minutes from the airport, on a road that climbs through a landscape of rice terraces, small temples and villages that have been continuous in the same locations since before any resort was built anywhere — Amankila occupies a hillside above the Lombok Strait that the Aman group’s founding architect, Ed Tuttle, selected as the third site for an Aman property in 1992. After Amanpuri in Phuket and Amandari in Ubud, Tuttle found a cliff above a black-sand beach, beneath the active volcano Mount Agung.

He built thirty-four free-standing suite villas on stilts into the hillside, connected by raised frangipani-lined walkways through the jungle canopy, and he designed the three-tier infinity pool that has since become one of the most photographed architectural decisions in all of Southeast Asian hospitality.

The pools are lined with volcanic slate. They cascade from the restaurant terrace down toward the beach in a reference — deliberate, precise — to the rice paddy terraces of the Buitan Valley visible in the distance.

The Setting

Mount Agung is behind you. The Lombok Strait is before you. At dusk, the strait changes colour through a sequence from deep blue to gold to mauve to the particular dark of a tropical sea at night.

The nearby Karangasem water palaces — Tirta Gangga and Ujung — are among the most extraordinary royal gardens in Southeast Asia: a Balinese king’s vision of the sacred intersection of water, stone and tropical geometry. They are twenty minutes from the hotel.

The Suites

The villas are Balinese beach houses elevated by everything Tuttle understood about the relationship between architecture and landscape. Thatched alang-alang ceilings of real height. Floors of cream terrazzo. Four-poster beds dressed in white. The outdoor bathroom — marble, open to the sky — is the kind of space in which you understand that luxury has nothing to do with modernity.

The Pool Suites are the correct choice: a private pool on your own terrace, a view of the strait, and the particular silence of a hillside in East Bali at six in the morning when Mount Agung is clear.

Dining

The Restaurant is open-sided at the top of the property, cantilevered over the hillside with the pools below and the strait beyond, lit at night by candle. Balinese xylophone music — rindik — is played live on several evenings a week. The menu moves between Indonesian and Western with the ease of a kitchen that has been doing this at the same property for thirty years.

The Honest Note

Oil tankers cross the Lombok Strait in significant numbers — an oil harbour operates nearby. They are visible on most days and are large, industrial, and not Balinese. They have not diminished the view for thirty years of guests and they will not diminish it for you. What they do provide is a useful reminder that this is the real island, not the curated version.

WLV Perspective

WLV Verdict: ★★★★★
Recommended Room: Ocean Suite or Pool Suite
Best For: Guests who have done Seminyak and want something that changes their view of Bali entirely

Amankila is the answer to the question: what is Bali when you take away everything that was added to it for the purpose of tourism? Three to four nights minimum, or as the second half of a Bali itinerary that begins in Seminyak or Ubud and ends here.

To discuss how Amankila fits within a broader Bali itinerary curated for your travel style, contact Wanderlux Velari — hello@wanderluxvelari.com | +61 459 958 247