Activities · North Bali
The Sekumpul waterfalls
The island's most spectacular falls are the hardest ones to reach, and that is the entire arrangement: a real trek, a village that organises the access, and a north-coast day that has to be earned.
Sekumpul is regularly called the most beautiful waterfall in Bali, and for once the superlative survives arrival: a horseshoe of jungle cliffs with several falls dropping in parallel, eighty metres of water in permanent mist. The name means "a group", and that is what you get, not one fall but a cluster, fed by two rivers.
What the visit involves
This is a walk, not a viewpoint. From the village the route descends hundreds of steps, crosses a river that runs shin-deep in the dry season and stronger in the wet, and climbs back out the same way. Sandals with a heel strap or trainers you accept getting wet are the right footwear, and everything electronic wants a dry bag for the spray at the bottom. Count the climb back out in your energy budget; it is the part people remember.
The village arrangement
Access runs through the village at the trailhead, which organises entry and local guiding the way Batur organises its trek: as a managed local market, settled at the desk before you walk. Agree what the arrangement includes before setting off, and treat the guide as part of the deal rather than an obstacle to it; the river crossing is their daily commute. We publish no fee figures until we can date them from a source.
Getting there and pairing it
Sekumpul sits in the Buleleng hills in the north, and the travel time matrix makes the honest case: from the southern resorts the drive dominates the day. The falls pair with Munduk and its own waterfall valley, or with a night in Lovina, far better than with a there-and-back from the south. The wet season swells the falls and muddies the steps in equal measure; the seasonal guide prices that trade.