A trip to the Bone Healer – and a different side of Bali

I whisper this to myself over and over as I crawl through the narrow, traffic-choked carriageways that fan out from downtown Denpasar. It takes an hour’s drive to clear Bali’s capital and reach an east-coast highway, where I pick up speed before detouring up a winding road to Besakih.

Set in the western foothills of the Mount Agung volcano, the village is home to the Besakih Great Temple, the largest religious site on the Indonesian island. But I have not come to explore the tiered shrines and labyrinthine alleys of the 10th century complex. I have come to see Mangku Sudarsana, aka the Bone Healer, a balian, or holy man, who practises medicine in the courtyard of his ancestral home (Klinik Mangku Sudarsana), about 1km down the road from the temple.

Five years ago, I herniated two discs in my lower back and consulted a conga line of healers for the chronic pain: masseuses, physiotherapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists and, finally, an ortho­paedic specialist. The only solution was surgery, or so I was led to believe, until the day I overheard a conversation at a beach club in Bali about a miracle man who lived in the mountains and had helped people walk again. The very next day, I went to see him.