Bali is part of the Republic of Indonesia. It is one of the country's 33 provinces with the provincial capital in Denpasar towards the south of the island. Bali is home to a population of over 3 million, the vast majority of which are Indonesia's small Hindu minority. Bali is also the largest tourist destination in the country and is renowned for its highly developed arts, including dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking and music.
Bali lies between Java in the West and Lombok in the East. The island is 153 km long and 112 km wide (95 by 69 miles) with a surface area of 5,633 km². It is famous for its beautiful landscape. A chain of six volcanoes, between 1,350 meters and 3,014 meters high, stretches from west to east. There are lush tropical forests, pristine crater lakes, fast flowing rivers and deep ravines and picturesque rice terraces and fertile vegetable and fruit gardens cover its alluvial plains.
The island is surrounded by coral reefs. The beaches in the south tend to have white sand while those in the north and west have black and grey volcanic sand. Bali has two active volcanoes. Mount Agung, Bali’s highest peak, rises to an impressive height of 3,142 m (10,308 feet). It last erupted in March 1963. An eruption around 30,000 years ago, from Mount Batur, Bali’s second active volcano was recoded as of one of the largest known volcanic events on Earth. The mountainous region covers Bali from its centre to the eastern side of the island. It is due to this terrain that the roads tend to follow the crests of the ridges across the mountains and the coast.
