Cave in Ubud
What cave you can find in Ubud if you travel into this area, the answer is the Elephant Cave or well known with Goa Gajah. It is located in a steep valley just outside of Ubud near the town of Bedulu. Built at least 700 years ago, the cave was rediscovered in the 1920s and fully excavated 30 years later. Thought to be a former hermitage for eleventh-century Hindu priests, Goa Gajah has now become a major tourist attraction, owing more to its proximity to the main Ubud-Gianyar road than to any remarkable atmosphere or ancient features. Besides the cave itself, there’s a traditional bathing pool here, as well as a number of ancient stone relics, and the usual collection of stalls selling refreshments and souvenirs.
Pools in Bali were usually built at holy sites, this one, close by a sacred spot so that devotees could cleanse themselves before making offerings or prayers. Local men and women would have bathed here in the segregated make (right-hand) and female (left-hand) sections, under the jets of water from the Petanu tributary channeled through the protruding navels of the full-breasted statues lining its back wall. Although the water still flows, the pools are now maintained for ornamental purposes only.
In comparison with the stately bathing pool, the hillside cave that overlooks it seems rather unexceptional, although the carvings that trumpet its entranceway are certainly impressive, if a little hard to distinguish. The doorway is in fact a huge gaping mouth, framed by the upper jaw of a monstrous rock-carved head that’s thought to represent either the earth god Bhoma, or the widow-witch Rangda, or hybrid of the two. Whatever its actual identity, the grotesque image is almost certain to have served both as to repell evil spirits and as a suggestion that on entering you were being swallowed up into another, holier, world. Early visitors thought it looked like an elephant’s head, which is how the cave got its modern name. A whole series of mythical creatures is also said to be carved into the bare rock face to the left and right of the head, but from the ground it’s very hard to spot them.
