Pura besakih is not a temple but a vast complex of temples sprawling across the mountainside. For most visitors, the first impression is of the literally hundreds of delicately towering meru, their many-tiered roofs of black palm-fiber thatching pointing skyward like a fleet of rockets awaiting the signal for lift-off.

Their purpose is, in fact, the opposite. Their structural core is unobstructed square tunnel down wich deities, ancestors, and spirits can descend on festive occasions to take their places in the shrines at their base.