The tours that add a waterfall or a temple on the way back down

$27 — the sunrise walk plus Tibumana. This is the classic morning with one stop bolted onto the end. You start in the small hours, walk up with a guide and a torch, eat breakfast at the top as the light comes in, and then come down to Tibumana rather than straight back to your hotel. Tibumana is a single drop into a wide green pool in a gorge, reached on foot from the road, and it works well at this hour because you arrive before the middle of the day. The whole listing runs five hours, the same as the walk on its own, which is the part that surprises people. Searching for Tibumana waterfall Bali will show you a dozen operators who sell it as a separate half-day; this listing folds it into a morning you were already having.

$33 — the full day from Ubud. No night start, no climb. Seven hours that begin at a civilised hour in Ubud and take in Tirta Empul, a waterfall and the Alas Harum estate, with the highland views along the way. Tirta Empul is a water temple with a spring-fed bathing court, and it is an active place of worship rather than a monument, which shapes how you visit: covered shoulders and knees, a sarong, and the quiet that the courtyard asks for. It is the only listing on this site carrying a 5.0, on 169 reviews — a smaller sample than the big sunrise listings, but an unbroken one so far.

$33 — Kehen Temple and the highland traditions. Eight hours with a guide around Pura Kehen and the villages of the old highlands, built for people who want the culture of this part of Bali explained rather than photographed in passing. Kehen is a terraced temple climbing a hillside in stages, with a banyan at its gate and stone stairways between the levels, and it sees a fraction of the visitors that the coastal temples do. With 452 reviews at 4.9, it is the best-rated of the three days here.

Two more listings belong in the same conversation even though neither visits a waterfall. $26 takes the sunrise jeep run and adds the jungle swing over the gorge; $45 pairs the sunrise walk with a rafting river in the afternoon. Both are the same instinct — the mountain is done by eight in the morning, so what happens next?

At the temples. Tirta Empul and Kehen are both working places of worship. Shoulders and knees covered, a sarong tied at the waist, and no walking in front of people who are praying. The sarong is usually available at the gate, and guides on these listings carry spares. In the bathing court at Tirta Empul there is a sequence that people follow; your guide will explain it, and standing aside and watching is a perfectly respectful way to visit. Any Bali temple tour worth booking will tell you this before you arrive rather than at the gate.

At the waterfall. Tibumana is reached by a stepped path down into the gorge, which means the walk back up is the real effort — and on $27 you are doing it after two hours of volcano in the dark. Steps are wet where the spray reaches them. Footwear that has already done the summit is exactly the right footwear for this.

On timing. Water in a jungle gorge photographs best when the sun is not directly overhead, which is another quiet argument for the sunrise pairing: you reach the gorge in the middle of the morning rather than the middle of the day. Anyone searching for a Bali waterfall jungle experience and picturing an empty pool should know that the popular sites fill up from late morning onward.

On entry. Where a listing says a site is included, it is included. Where it does not say so, we are not going to invent a figure — the operators publish what they publish, and admission at individual sites is the one thing these listings are least consistent about. Ask at the point of booking if it matters to your budget.

Search for water on this island and you will meet a long list of names, most of which have nothing to do with this caldera. It is worth being straight about that, because the distances in Bali are short on a map and long in a car.

On the road between Ubud and the highlands sit the gorges that these listings can reasonably reach. Tibumana is the one that appears by name in a listing on this site. Names like suwat waterfall Bali and goa raja waterfall Bali belong to the same broad stretch of country east of Ubud, and tukad cepung waterfall Bali — the one inside a slot cave, which is why it is photographed the way it is — is in the same direction again.

In the north and the far east are most of the rest. Anyone weighing up munduk waterfall Bali or gitgit waterfall Bali is looking at the northern hills, a long drive the other side of the ridge; banyumala waterfall Bali is up there too, at the end of a steep descent. On the east coast side, gembleng waterfall Bali and leke leke waterfall Bali turn up in the same searches, and so does fiji waterfall Bali, which is a small site near Gianyar rather than anything to do with the Pacific.

None of those appear in any listing on this site, and we are not going to imply otherwise. If your plan is to see the best waterfall in Bali — a title that changes depending on who you ask and how far you are prepared to drive — then it belongs on a different day, with a different booking. What the listings here offer is the one that fits naturally into a morning you were already spending on the mountain.