Lempuyang Temple and the Gate of Heaven from Ubud: The Queue, the Mirror Trick, and How to Beat Both

Pura Penataran Agung Lempuyang is the lowest of seven temples that climb Mount Lempuyang in Karangasem, east Bali. Its candi bentar, the split gate, faces west towards Mount Agung, and on a clear morning the volcano sits exactly between the two halves. That framing is the photograph, and the photograph is the reason a temple that was quiet ten years ago now has a queue.

The temple itself is a working one, and the higher six take a few hours of stairs through forest to reach; almost nobody who comes for the gate goes further, and the priests are used to that. Treat the courtyard as a temple, not a set: sarong on, quiet, no climbing on the walls, and no entry for anyone menstruating or in mourning, which is the rule at every temple on Bali.

The mirror-still lake under the gate does not exist. A photographer at the front of the queue holds a small sheet of glass under the lens of your phone, tilts it, and the gate reflects in it. It is a neat trick, it takes ten seconds, and the tip is voluntary. Knowing this in advance saves the disappointment that a surprising number of people feel on arrival, and it also means you can decide whether the queue is worth it for a photo that is, in the end, a mirror trick with a real volcano behind it.

If you want a photograph of the gate with the mountain and nobody in it, the first fifteen minutes after opening, around 7:00, are the only window.

You take a number at the desk in the lower car park, ride the shuttle up, and wait your turn at the gate; each group gets about a minute with the photographer. By 9:00 on a dry-season morning the wait is an hour, by eleven it can be three, and there is little shade. Tours from Ubud leave at 5:00 for a reason.

The alternative is not to fight it: go for the temple and the walk, or go late afternoon in the wet season when the queue thins and the light is soft, accepting that Agung may be in cloud.

Agung is most often visible from about 6:30 to 9:00 in the dry season, April to October. Cloud builds around the summit from late morning almost every day, and in the wet season it can be hidden for days at a time. Nobody can promise the view, and an operator who does is guessing. If the mountain matters more than the gate, ask your driver on the morning; from the coast road near Amlapura you can see whether the top is out before you commit to the queue.

Lempuyang is two hours from Ubud, so it anchors a full day rather than a stop. The standard loop continues to Tirta Gangga, the water palace built by the last raja of Karangasem in 1946, with its stepping stones across a carp pond, then to Taman Ujung, the same family's earlier palace on the coast, and back by the Sidemen valley, where the terraces are as good as Tegallalang without the swings. Some tours add a lunch stop at a rice-field warung near Sidemen, which is the better of the options.

For the other side of Ubud's day trips, see the day trips from Ubud guide and the temples guide, which covers Tirta Empul and the closer sites.