Tabanan

Tabanan's territory covers the hill and Lake Area of Bedugul and the southern slopes of Mount Batukaru, Bali's second highest mountain, and western Bali's axis mundi, defining the mountain-sea (kaja-kelod) orientation of the architecture and rites. Open to cultivation relatively late, in the 18th Century, Tabanan is Bali's most famous site, the Tanah Lot Temple. It consists of a couple of shrines built on an outcropping of rocks just offshore the coast, thus becomes an islet at high tide. "Tanah" means earth, and "Lot" means sea.

The temple symbolizes the point of encounter between natural and cosmic elements: male female, inner world, outer world. One of Bali's cosmic temples-Sad Kahyangan-it was built by the wandering saint of Bali, Dang Hyang Nirartha, in the 16th Century.