Jasri – the surfer’s dark place

Smoke visible from afar above the coconut palms, a gray sky, the sun through the clouds resembles more of a moon. A small black cliff and a sandy beach make a good landing spot. Orc boats likely arrived here a few days earlier, and they have already set up camp right by the ocean. Among the tall coconut palms, they found excellent conditions for building a temporary settlement.

Pointed bamboo structures covered with straw roofs, bamboo walls, and natural materials. The shade under the coconut palms makes it a perfect spot for a settlement.

The locals sit on the beach as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Why aren’t they defending themselves? From a closer distance, more details become visible. You can see them playing football among the bamboo structures, and a few are surfing on the waves near the shore. They behave completely normally, cooking something over a fire.

It doesn’t seem dangerous. They nod in greeting, speaking some English, and the younger ones smile. These people live here.

Jasri on the western side looks like something out of a slightly dark fairytale or Warcraft. A place with an imaginative name, “Chocolate Factory,” old bungalows with thatched roofs, coconut palms reaching toward the ocean over the black beach. With the overcast sky, it looks rather gloomy but surprisingly good—like a living museum, a lost city, or an ancient settlement. Cows are grazing right by the cliff, local surfers are near the shore, having come out to practice after school. There are many local fishing boats. In this natural setting, there are also villas, quite exclusive, old, often wooden, with large spaces around them. They look abandoned. Some are actually abandoned, while others sometimes have guests, though very few. This part of the coastline is unique—authentic, rugged, with black sand on the beach and abandoned villas.

You can reach here from Jasri beach, you just have to consistently pass all the discouraging signs along the way, the empty stone coastline, the dead-end street, and the trash thrown on the black sand. You could go back to the main road and turn toward Virgin Beach, the first sandy road after the gas station, with signage barely visible on an old board shaped like a small surfboard.

The sandy road leads through picturesque rice fields, and then a coconut palm forest. There’s a third option, further west, a turn onto an asphalt road, also passing through rice fields. This variant is the most pleasant to drive, with beautiful views, but there’s no sandy beach at the end. In theory, you could reach the previous two by the coast, but the wall from the property with bungalows for rent effectively blocks the way.

It’s worth stopping by here, for example, after visiting Tirta Gangga. The place is unique, special, but not charming—more on the gloomy side. Thatched roofs, coconut palms, bamboo structures, old wooden villas, cows grazing in some spots right by the pitch-black beach with a view of the ocean. There are no orcs, but the rest fits the imagery of Warcraft.

By K&P

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