Photography by Isabell N Wedin: WANDERLUST // Part 1 BALI

On the 15th of January I left a snowy and cold Sweden behind with my close friend Madde as my travel companion. After several months of planning we were excited for the 7 1/2 weeks ahead of us. We planned to first visit Bali, Australia and then finishing it all in New Zealand. I don't think we could have imagined the adventure it would turn out to be and how bitten we would become by the "travel bug". During these magical weeks I took a massive amount of images, some for work and some for pleasure, which kind of is the same for me. With that many images I realized the best way to tell our story would be to divided it all in three blogposts, one for each country. For years I had been thinking of going to Bali and arriving there felt a bit surreal. Some friends had told me that I would be disappointed, that I should go somewhere else and some said I would love it, of course I went there thinking the last one. The first impression was the heat and how humid it was stepping out of the airport, it felt just as exotic as I had imaged it would. We spent our first nights at Serenity guesthouse in Canggu, which is a small village on the beach about 20 minutes north of Seminyak. There we practiced yoga and I tried being a vegan during the hole stay on the island and I almost made it. I wanted to see if it was possible after being a pescatarian for almost 16 years now. I feel that we all should challenge ourselves now and then and eating less meat and dairy is something I believe strongly in. We had some lazy days in Canggu, I got a healing massage which was a bit strange but it turned out to help me a lot with the pain I have experiences in my feet, carrying all that camera equipment. In Canggu we also befriended Maria, another swed that we had the pleasure of meeting again in Ubud where we went next. Ubud was a place that we liked so much that we ended up staying for the remaining nights. It is regarded as the cultural centre of Bali and it's full of cute cafes, beautiful crafts and interesting galleries. You can also tell that there is a special focus and interest on health and wellbeing. My friend and I went to The Yoga barn, a wonderful place every yoga lover needs to visit while in Ubud and we tried ecstatic dance for the first time and it was liberating. In the days we spent in Ubud we also took a cooking class, went on a rainy bicycle tour, learned about Balinese coffee, treated ourselves with spa treatments, went on a road trip around the island, went to see the cute and a bit scary monkeys at Sacred monkey forrest and on our last days we met up with Maria, a woman from our village in Sweden who lives in Ubud since a few years with her family. Besides from taking family photos in sunrise I also took more artsy pictures of Maria. During this hole time I was traveling with products from swedish clients that I photographed at every stop. Traveling and working combined is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Bali is truly beautiful, cheap and wonderful, the 10 nights we spent on the island is not enough to experience it all but I can see myself going back in the future for sure.