About Blahmantung Waterfall (Air Terjun Blahmantung)
The Blahmantung Waterfall is said to be one of the tallest waterfalls in Bali, which certainly compelled us to target it on a trip to the island.
However, there was a bit of misinformation surrounding this waterfall on the internet, which actually landed us a serendipitous experience with the Blahmaning Waterfall.
Nevertheless, when we finally did get to experience the Blahmantung Waterfall, we witnessed something that seemed to be getting a bit more attention from foreign tourists.
Yet we also walked on a lesser-known path that allowed us to experience other waterfalls in the area in the same excursion.
By the way, these waterfalls included the Blemantung Waterfall (which locals said was called Rajapala Waterfall) as well as the Bidadari Waterfall.
In any case, from what I could tell, the Blahmantung Waterfall certainly was one of the taller free-falling ones that we’ve witnessed in person as it appeared like it plunged 50m (though I’ve seen some claim it’s 100m tall).
If you buy the latter figure, then that might put it even taller than the Sekumpul Waterfall which was said to be 80m tall (though it too has been claimed to be upwards of 100m tall).
Regardless, I appreciated the more intimate experience that we managed to get with this waterfall, which really felt more rewarding than the direct out-and-back excursion that we saw other foreign tourists do.
In this write-up, I’ll describe how we did the full excursion though if you’re only interested in the direct out-and-back hike to just the Blahmantung Waterfall, then skip to the last section.
How To Find The Blahmantung Waterfall
The primary reason why I tend to think the Blahmantung Waterfall had its share of misinformation on the internet is that GoogleMaps has multiple waypoints for it.
So if you end up routing to the wrong waypoint, then you end up doing what we did and arrive at the Blahmaning Waterfall thinking it’s the Blahmantung Waterfall.
The key thing to remember regarding the target waterfall is that it’s near the village of Pujungan, which is just to the east of Pupuan Village (also the name of the district the falls is in).
It’s for this reason that you might also see the Blahmantung Waterfall called the Air Terjun Pupuan (or Pupuan Waterfall).
The Blahmaning Waterfall is actually closer to Tinggarsari Village so if you find yourself on a side road that passes through this village, be aware that you’re likely NOT going to the Blahmantung Waterfall!
We’ll detail a bit more about the driving directions, but just realize that the village you’re nearby pretty much tells you everything you need to know about not confusing the waterfalls.
Trail Description – The Rajapala and Bidadari Waterfalls
From the start of the hike, we passed by a short side waterfall next to the trailhead before descending for about 200m towards a trail fork.
At this fork, there was a steep, narrow ramp going up to the right, which turned out to the be direct trail leading to the Blahmantung Waterfall.
However, we kept to the left to continue the descent which eventually bottomed out at around 500m from the junction.
Down at these depths, we started to notice a tall waterfall, which Gaia GPS labeled as the Blemantung Waterfall.
This was an impressively tall waterfall dropping in at least two noticeable tiers upwards of 30m or so, but it seemed to have been intervened with to feed an irrigation ditch and weir further downstream.
Roughly 200m from the weir or dam control shelter, there was a steep path that rose up towards the top of the cliff before descending across a footbridge right in front of the upper tier of the Blemantung Waterfall.
Up here, we spoke to some locals who were doing trail work, and they said that this waterfall was actually called the Rajapala Waterfall, which meant something like “king”.
This detour was about 250m each way (or 500m round-trip), and it probably was the most strenuous (or at least sweatiest) part of the hike so far.
After having our fill of the Rajapala Waterfall and rejoining the trail, we then hiked roughly another 200m towards what our guide called the Bidadari Waterfall, which is Balinese for “angel”.
This stretch of the walk included a couple of unbridged stream crossings before going past a trail junction and skirt a small dam or diversion wall before reaching a shelter fronting the modestly-sized waterfall.
The Bidadari Waterfall was more of a cooling off spot as opposed to a swimming hole because its plunge pool was shallow.
Once we had our fill of the Bidadari Waterfall, we then went back to the nearby junction and climbed up through a coffee plantation before rejoining a more established trail, which went towards the Blahmantung Waterfall.
Trail Description – The Blahmantung Waterfall
According to my GPS logs, the trail we were on rejoined the Blahmantung Waterfall Trail about 600m to the east of the trail fork we skipped earlier on and about 200m west of the waterfall itself.
In the first 200m of the ramp from the trail fork, the trail sloped pretty steeply as it made its way up towards a coffee plantation with some fruit trees being grown.
The path was concrete (probably meant to be for scooter traffic), but it has the unintended effect of being quite slippery when wet (especially with the combination of rain and humidity).
This was especially the case when Mom and I had to descend it on the way back, but this is something to be very careful of.
Anyways, continuing beyond the coffee plantation, the track eventually approached a prayer-only shrine followed by a shelter before ending right at the plunge pool of the Blahmantung Waterfall.
The boulder-fringed plunge pool itself was quite sizable though it was surrounded by very steep cliffs, which made me very aware of the rockfall danger.
Of course, no one was swimming here during our late June 2022 visit because of the sporadic rain squalls that came and went throughout.
After having our fill of the Blahmantung Waterfall, we then hiked the remaining 1-1.2km or so back to the trailhead.
Overall, Mom and I spent about 2.5 hours away from the car, which included the time spent chilling out at each of the waterfalls.
However, it could easily be half that amount of time and distance if we only targeted the Blahmantung Waterfall without doing the other waterfalls.
Authorities
The Blahmantung Waterfall resides in the Tabanan Regency near the village of Pujungan in Bali Province, Indonesia. It may be administered by the Tabanan Regency local government. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting this website.
The Blahmantung Waterfall is located about 1.5km northeast of Pujungan Village or about 37km south of Lovina Beach.
That said, we were driven to the trailhead for the Blahmantung Waterfall from Kuta, which took at least 2.5 hours.
Since our long drive was part of a make-up visit to see the actual Blahmantung Waterfall (in light of our Blahmaning Waterfall mistake), I won’t labor you with our specific situation and bother with giving driving directions.
Therefore, you can look at the embedded map above for your own trip planning needs.
In hindsight, had we driven from Lovina Beach straight to the Pujungan Village, then that drive should take on the order of about an hour.
For geographical context, Pujungan Village is 38km (about an hour drive) south of Lovina Beach, 47km (about 90 minutes drive) south of Singaraja, about 31km (an hour drive) west of Bedugul, 68km (about 2 hours drive) northwest of Ubud, about 72km (about 2 hours drive) northwest of Kuta, about 61km (about 90 minutes drive) northwest of Canggu, and about 67km (about 2 hours drive) northwest of Seminyak.
Note that you’ll want to take the drive times with a grain of salt mostly because the traffic situation (especially in Southern Bali) is pretty bad and unpredictable.
I touched upon this earlier, but you can see this for yourself when you compare the above GoogleMaps estimate versus the actual time it took our driver to get from Kuta to Pujungan (about 2 hours versus 2.5 hours).
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Clean look at the Blemantung Waterfall from a dam control shelter before panning along its drop then ending with last contextual look again
Checking out the uppermost drops of the Blemantung Waterfall from the footbridge area in front of it
Brief sweep checking out an intermediate waterfall and shelter between Blemantung and Blahmantung
Brief sweep starting with the full height of the main falls then panning along its drop before zooming back out again
Sweep checking out the nearest waterfall to the start of the trail
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