Adam Skolnick

Posting from Kupang, West Timor. This shot was taken in Temkessi, an indigenous village high in the mountains. Something about her is haunting in the most beautiful way. West Timor is a mind bender.

On a somewhat stylish visit to Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, Adam Skolnick comes face to face with dragons and lives to tell the tale.   On a sweltering morning Condo Subagyo, 46, and I hack through thick brush to reach a red clay trail. We follow it as it winds beneath huge tamarind trees dangling [...]

Diego Arrarte hangs up his cell and accelerates his moderately dented late-model Toyota pick-up past hip-high stone fencing, and thatched lontar-palm shacks as we speed down the white earth roads of Nembrala Town – the tourist epicenter of little-known Rote island. Seems his guest, a hilarious, middle-aged Argentinean surfer, misjudged the road to Bo’a beach. [...]

It’s sunset on the rooftop at the hip new Anantara Seminyak. Beautiful, moneyed Javanese and Bali’s euro-glam collection of expats cozy up on daybeds, sip martinis and nibble on grilled prawns. I feel at home. A DJ blends electro-funk from a sleek Mac, the martinis keep flowing and so does the food. The conversation veers [...]

Evocative sounds filtered through the open-air yoga pavilion as I completed a sun salutation at Bali’s Como Shambhala Estate at Begawan Giri: the sunset song of tropical birds, the rolling thunder of the Ayung River, the faintest chant originating from a Hindu temple…

It looks like Heaven needs a good rain. Its outskirts could not be dryer. There are a few struggling tobacco plots in the parched brown hills. One abuts a compound of lean-to thatched bamboo shacks with satelite TV.

Here are some other things you didn’t know about Heaven. You get here via a narrow dirt track, which feels more like a trench. Some of the drops are so deep, I actually grunt as the car [yes you can drive to Heaven] lurches forward. Skateboarders will be pleased to hear that Heaven is equipped with an expertly molded, concrete half-pipe. Oh, and I should also mention that Heaven is actually right here on planet earth. In Lombok, Indonesia.