Eight reasons
to look for the names.

In Ubud, it's remarkably easy to find a woman carved into stone.

She might be standing in a doorway, carrying something on her head, holding a horse by its tail, or watching you from a wall that's been here for centuries.

What isn't always easy is finding her name.

At Yeh Pulu, six women appear in a long rock carving. Nobody knows who they were meant to be. At an ancient bathing pool nearby, six stone figures pour water into the pools below them.

There was room for a seventh.

Nobody knows who stood there, either.

Ubud and the villages around it have a long history of women appearing in art, religious traditions, and stories whose meanings aren't always entirely clear.

But there's another side to that history.

For generations, women were the subjects of paintings made by men. They danced, carried offerings, and appeared in scenes of village life. Their faces were everywhere.

Their signatures were not.

Until a group of women decided that needed to change.

In 1991, nine women gathered on a living-room floor near Ubud and started an association for women artists.

One of the painters who followed had begun drawing as a child with the stem of a coconut leaf, because the boys were allowed to paint and she wasn't.

Another young woman from a village nearby traveled all the way to Broadway in 1952, where she danced a brand-new piece about two bumblebees.

She was only twelve or thirteen.

But Ubud isn't simply a place where old traditions gave way to new ideas.

In Batuan, women of every age still take part in a sacred dance performed over months of the year. And at a temple beside a lotus pond, Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, is honored with a day when books are left closed.

Here, tradition and creativity have never been entirely separate things.

Across eight places, you'll encounter women carved into cliffs, painted on ceilings, remembered through dance, and finally signing their own work.

Some left their names.

Some left only an image.

And some, it seems, had been there all along.

You don't need to know what happens before you go. You only need somewhere worth walking toward.

JUNO PORTALS is designed primarily for women traveling alone.

That doesn't mean every experience has to be solitary. It means the product starts from a simple reality: sometimes you're already here, the day is yours, and you'd like a reason to go somewhere you might otherwise have passed.

Read the access note for the portal you choose. Some places are further out than they look on the map, and some are private or working places you only see from outside.

THE HAND THAT HOLDS ON, BUILT FOR SEVEN, ALMOST AS LARGE AS THE KING, A LINE OF WOMEN EVERY NIGHT, WHO SIGNS THE PICTURE and I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE need a ticket or paid entry.

Prices and hours change. Check them on the day.

Curiosity gets you there. Your judgment always comes first.