Bali’s first hot air balloon experience, born from a single vision

It started with a single image.
When Mrs. Puri Hadiprana first saw Tanah Gajah from above — the slow geometry of Ubud’s rice terraces, the jungle canopy folding into the horizon, and Mount Agung standing sentinel in the east — she felt compelled to share it. Not through a screen, but in the truest sense: with guests standing in an open sky, held by the beauty of it in real time.

The aerial footage of The Tempayan restaurant and its surrounding rice fields sparked a question she couldn’t let go of. How do you give a guest not just a view, but the feeling of truly inhabiting it?

The answer arrived quietly. A hot air balloon — tethered to the earth, yet free enough to reveal the landscape of Ubud in a way that nothing else can.

Nearly a decade above the rice fields of Ubud
What followed was a deliberate act of care. Securing Bali’s first licensed hot air balloon operation. Choosing a balloon worthy of the extraordinary landscape beneath it. Finding the precise point at the edge of our own rice paddies — within the 6-hectare estate of Tanah Gajah, a Resort by Hadiprana — where sky and earth meet most beautifully.

Since our first flight in 2018, thousands of guests have risen 50 metres above the rice fields of Ubud with us. At the blush of sunrise, in the amber warmth of a Balinese sunset, and beneath the quiet theatre of a star-filled night. They have watched the mist lift from the terraces below. Witnessed Mount Agung catch the first gold of morning. Understood, perhaps for the first time, just how extraordinary stillness can be when you are suspended above one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth.

What began as one woman’s vision has become one of the most celebrated luxury experiences in Bali — and we carry that origin story with us on every ascent.