Herons and Swallows

Friday 11th March 2010, 11.35pm, Merthayasa Bungalows - Ubud

Every evening at 6pm, as the sun makes it's descent, about 20 minutes away from the centre of Ubud town in a rural little sub-district called Petulu, a flock of hundreds of herons descend upon the trees by the river. And no one knows why. They first began roosting here in 1966 and village elders will tell you that the birds are in fact reincarnations of the men and women who died throughout Bali in the civil unrest of the same year, many of those who died were laid to rest in burial grounds near the trees that the herons now call home. Isn't this enchanting? Well I think it is. So enchanting in fact that when a motorbike taxi driver told me about this unexplained phenomenon yesterday, I decided I needed to see it for myself.

At about 5pm this evening I hired a bicycle and precariously (I'm very much out of cycling practice) pedalled my way through farmland and countryside to Petulu. It was utterly unreal to behold. These gargantuan white winged creatures fly in tandem from the North of the river, and as you sit on the bank and wait expectantly for their arrival you can make out their soaring silhouettes becoming larger and larger as they approach on time as promised, the sound of their vast wings beating the windless horizon. They perch in the trees noiselessly, without fuss or commotion, as though each bird had his own preordained, designated branch on which to rest. I sat there enthralled with them for some time, as bemused as all the locals have been by this mysterious scene. Time passed - as it has a horrible habit of doing - and before I realised it, it was dark. Aware of my lack (nae, deficit) of cross-country biking experience, I was forced to hastily and reluctantly find me and the bike a way back in to town. Lucky that I took my hand-held torch, less lucky that I have trouble staying on the bike with only one hand on the handlebar.

Sleepy and sweating from the evening heat and the exertion I returned home and slipped into the swimming pool for a nighttime dip. A word on my accommodation here... it is, Luxurious. When hunting for a room the other day, the owner of Merthayasa Bungalows saw me grumpily hauling the backpack up another hill and encouraged me to come in here and take a look, cleverly refusing to tell me the price before I'd had the tour. There are only 8 bungalows here and mine is huge, bright and clean, with a double bed, en suite bathroom, power shower, dressing table and ample room for which to throw my clothes all over the floor. My veranda - where I am served a breakfast of my choice - is arched with wooden trellis smothered in tiny, perfume-wafting pink flowers, and looks out on to a small but perfectly formed aquamarine infinity pool, bordered by fountains and marble statues. Once I'd fallen head over heels in love with the place he offered it to me for 150,000 rupiah a night, which I dejectedly conceded that I could not afford. He changed his price to 100,000 rupiah, which is 7 and a half Great British pounds, and I practically threw my wallet at him.

The pool is lit with underwater lamps at night, and unlike some bigger, miserly hotels in Kuta, there is no restriction on how late you are permitted to swim. So I spent a blissful hour between 10 and 11pm tonight completely on my own in the pool, floating on my back, looking up at the stars. Being away from the city with no pollution or industry even close to the jungles of Ubud, those glittery planets really do have a chance to shine. It was cloudless and undisturbed, and there were thousands of them twinkling above my watery bed.

When I was in the pool I got to thinking about why the herons in Petulu had moved me so much, what was it about them that I found so wonderful? Down a small road about 2 minutes from where I live at home, there are a collection of Oak trees at one end which play host every summer to a flock of migrating swallows. They have been to Africa, these birds. When the British weather turns they fly across continents to the heat of the Equator, and yet every Summer they unfailingly and loyally return to exactly the same 4 or 5 trees, in Elm Avenue, in little old Upminster. This idea delighted me as a child growing up around those streets and it still delights me now, warming my heart at the beginning of every May when I hear their familiar cries in my home town. The herons in Petulu, well they delighted me for precisely the same reason. No one can tell where they have been or what they have seen, what landscape they have flown across or why they have picked this destination as their home. But it is their home, and they always return, the swallows in May, the herons at 6pm. I find it startling in its simplicity, and with my swallows, always strangely humbling that they would choose to come back to me over the plains of Africa. Of course I know it's just an evolutionary habit, old birds die and new birds are added to the flock each year, but I like to imagine it is exactly the same group of swallows that I have welcomed back to those trees every year of my life, that they look out for me as I for them - separated for half the year then familiar fixtures in each others' lives once again.

It is no accident that I have a swallow tattooed on my skin, flying with me wherever I go. And although I may not hold weight with the reincarnation argument, I can understand why the herons have come to symbolise the lost dead for those that live in Petulu - they want to believe that the people they loved have returned to them. We all go home in the end, whether that be to a place or to a person. No matter how far away we may travel, there will always be a tree somewhere on this planet that we can keep on returning to roost in.