Lombok travel guide

Although you’re much less likely to see bikini-clad tourists strolling through beach resorts there’s every chance to visit a Sasak village and be shown the intricacies of songket dress making by a local female tour guide who arrives on the back of a motorbike. Life on Lombok exists without Western ways, as it always has, where you’re just as likely to hear the early morning call to prayer as you are the whistle of an endemic scops owl whilst staying in a village at the base of Mount Rinjani. Scenery is much more rugged, mountainous, dramatic, with Rinjani, the island’s volcanic centrepiece, revered for forest-covered highlands and fertile lowlands where cotton, coffee and soya beans are cultivated, much as they have been for generations. Lombok’s a place of peace and quiet with deserted beaches from where to surf, swim or snorkel over coral, or simply soak up the sunshine and silence. Shhhh.

Find out more in our Lombok travel guide.

One of the easiest ways of getting from Bali to Lombok, other than by plane, is an organised fast boat from Padangbai to Lembar, which will deposit you on Lombok's west coast, approx 20km south of the largest city, Mataram, and about a two-hour bus ride from Tetebatu, just south of Mount Rinjani, in central Lombok. Lombok's international airport, Praya, is about an hour's drive south of Tetebatu and roughly two hours' drive southeast of Labuhan Pandan, on Lombok's northeast coast. Trips by small boat to the Gili Islands – Gili Air being the closest to Lombok – depart from Bangsal Harbour on Lombok's northwest coast, and take around 30 minutes.