Lombok, almost like home
An essay on finding home in a new place and carrying it with you wherever you go.
On a dull afternoon in dusty Kuta Lombok, I got a notification from Giulia: she had finally shared her proposal for the editorial plan for The Untravelist with me. The afternoon became less dull, excitement took over until I got stuck on one article’s title: ‘Lombok, almost like home’.
What did she mean by almost, I thought? Lombok is my home. I’ve got all the ordinary things I have had somewhere else, plus three cats, which she knows well, and a business, which she knows even better. No place has ever ticked more boxes than Lombok to qualify as home. I blamed the heat and the brain fog, she must mean something I cannot figure out, I thought, and moved on with the errands of the day.
I did not really think about it again until a few weeks later, on an early morning when I was riding my bike for a hospital appointment in Mataram, the capital of the island. Riding a bike outside Kuta is one of the things I enjoy the most in Lombok. Maybe it is because I can sing and talk out loud to myself with little shame, knowing only the chickens can hear me. Maybe it is because I have not grown tired of the landscape, yet. Either way, it feels good. That’s when I had a moment of self-satisfied conviction. I smiled at myself: I even go to the doctors here without Google Maps. See, Lombok is home.
A few minutes later, I hit my favourite bend in the road. This is where, on a lucky day, Mount Rinjani suddenly steps out from behind the clouds, framed by rice fields that shift from green to gold depending on the season. If you are lucky to see Rinjani on this road, the sky is always an unbroken blue. That morning I was lucky. All my conviction shattered. Shit, do I really live here? How can I live in such a beautiful place? How did I manage to swap the commute on the 149 from Haggerston to Liverpool Street for a bike ride from Kuta to Mataram? Some days my home feels like this, too good to be true. Other days, everyday life wears me down and I wonder why I chose Indonesia at all.
On the ride back, Rinjani was hiding behind the clouds again, leaving me alone with my thoughts of what home is. I counted the time between walking away from the life I had built in London and moving to Lombok. I had spent sixteen months out of a backpack in Asia, then out of a suitcase in Europe. Living out of a backpack is like riding a bike in Indonesia: it feels good but if I try to explain why, I cannot quite convey the feeling. It is probably because you strip down your belongings to essentials and realise how little you actually need. A cliché that turns out to be true.
The sound of a mosque along the road brought back a memory of India. Meenakshi, the fish-eyed warrior goddess, had been with me the whole time. Early in a trip in 2024, I was given a simple block of wood with a slightly worn Meenakshi sticker pressed onto it in a small shop outside a temple in Madurai. From there, small rituals developed. I would put her into a small pocket in my backpack every time I had to check my luggage, convinced that she would protect my only belongings from the chaos of Asian airports and that I would not lose her. Most of the remaining time she stayed in my backpack, waiting for me to sleep in one place for more than a night. That’s when I would put her on whatever surface was available and thank her for looking after me before going to sleep.
Long before I built another home, home had been the familiar sight of Meenakshi staring at me every time I opened my luggage. Maybe the article should be ‘Meenakshi, almost like home’, I joked. But then it clicked and I laughed at how defensive I had been days earlier. I had taken almost to mean not enough, a failure to fully belong to one place.
What if Lombok is completely home, and the ‘almost’ part simply belongs to the idea that no single place can hold everything home is? I can build a new life every time I move somewhere new, but some of what I call home comes with me: small habits and little objects, like the Meenkashi figure or carta d’Eritrea incense and its unmistakable smell.
‘Lombok, almost like home’ I said out loud, while pinching myself. A silly, instinctive gesture to ground myself. Rinjani was behind me now and I was dropping back into the dust and noise of Kuta, that open construction site many of us foreigners call home here in Lombok. Time to go back home and thank Meenakshi for looking after me again.
