Candace Rose Rardon: Number Lessons on Nusa Penida

15 Mar Candace Rose Rardon: Number Lessons on Nusa Penida

Candace Rose Rardon is an American writer, photographer and artist who sketches as she travels. These sketches, combined with the stories behind them, poignantly portray those moments of encounter and illumination that become the stepping stones of adventure, inner and outer. We are extremely pleased to present her on-the-road sketches-and-stories here.

It’s 4pm on the Indonesian island of Nusa Penida, southeast of Bali, and I’m due back at the garage I rented my motorbike from in exactly one hour.

Never mind that I’ve wound my way high into the island’s interior hills, with little idea of which road will lead me home; and never mind that I’m on a vehicle I’ve only just learned to drive, which has me going at a speed considerably less than the limit – when I pass a temple with two tiered-roof towers, I brake to a stop.

Ever since sketching the pagoda-like temples in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square last year, I’ve had a thing for drawing them, specifically those with layered roofs. To find one here on Nusa Penida feels serendipitous and wholly worthy of a sketch. I park the bike, get out my paints, and find a seat outside a small shop, or warung. One sip of thirst-quenching jasmine iced tea later and I’m set to start.

It doesn’t take long for a crowd to gather, as though I were a crumb dropped into a waiting school of fish. Young girls and their mothers stand in a careful half-moon around me, looking from my sketchbook to the temple and back again, both confirming and correcting my lines. When I count out loud the number of roofs on each tower, the children whisper along with me in Bahasa Indonesian.

I ask them to count again, this time with my camera rolling so I can learn the numbers myself. Soon everyone is joining in: “Satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima…” They place more emphasis on the second syllable of each number; this has a particular cadence to it, so that their counting sounds almost like chanting.

With my bottle of tea empty and my sketch only half dry, I pull away from the village, aware that leaving new friends only gets harder the longer you put it off. My phone reads 4:50pm, but I have a feeling the garage won’t mind.

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Don George

Don George is the Adventure Collection’s Web Editor in Chief. A highly respected and pioneering travel journalist for more than three decades, Don is the author of "The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George," and of "Lonely Planet's Guide to Travel Writing." Don is currently Editor at Large for National Geographic Traveler and Special Features Editor for BBC Travel. He has also been Global Travel Editor for Lonely Planet Publications, Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, and founder and editor of Salon.com’s travel site, Wanderlust. In addition to authoring two books, Don has edited ten literary travel anthologies, including “The Kindness of Strangers,” “An Innocent Abroad," and "Better Than Fiction." He has won numerous awards for his writing and editing, and he speaks, teaches, and consults at campuses, conferences, and corporations around the world.

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