Tours in Tukad Cepung Waterfall

Tukad Cepung is a waterfall inside a cave. It sits in the Bangli regency of central Bali. A river has cut a narrow slot through soft volcanic rock. The fall drops into a chamber that is open to the sky through a gap overhead.

For a couple of hours in the middle of the morning, the sun is high enough to line up with that gap. A shaft of light comes down through the spray and lands on the pool. That is the reason it became famous. It is busier than its size warrants.

Getting in takes some effort. Several hundred steps drop from the car park, and the last hundred metres are a wade up the streambed between rock walls.

The visit takes an hour to ninety minutes, including the walk in and out. It is nearly always combined with something else. That means the Tegalalang terraces, Tirta Empul, the Kintamani rim, or one of the canyon falls nearby. Tibumana and Kanto Lampo are gentler and often emptier.

Local guides wait at the entrance, useful mainly for the slippery sections. Photographers time their arrival for the light beam, and the crowds do the same. The chamber can hold thirty people at once.

Practical

• The light. The shaft appears between about nine and eleven in the morning, and only on a clear day.
• Wet season. Avoid it entirely for this one. Heavy rain raises the stream, muddies the water and makes the slot genuinely dangerous, and flash flooding is a real risk in a canyon of this shape.
• Footing. The steps down are steep and the streambed is slippery, so water shoes or sandals with grip.
• Clothes. Nothing you mind soaking to the knee. Leave anything you cannot get wet in the car.
• Money. A small entrance fee and a parking charge, cash only.
• Getting there. About forty minutes from Ubud.