Sekumpul is not one waterfall but a group of them: anywhere from two to seven ribbons dropping side by side down a single jungle cliff in the north of Bali, the strongest of them about eighty metres. The name means a group, and the group depends on how much rain has fallen. The clifftop platform is the only place they all show, so that is where you count them. They land in one green amphitheatre of volcanic rock whose walls drip with ferns. Two of the main falls hang next to each other and come from different waters. One is fed by a mountain spring filtered through rock and runs bright all year; its neighbour draws on a river that turns chocolate brown whenever the wet season swells it.
The way down is several hundred steep steps through jungle, and the last of it is not a path but the river. A few shallow crossings put you on a wet rock bench directly beneath the twin main drops, where the spray comes across like rain and the roar fills the bowl. The bench stays wet all day and the stone is uneven, so the last few metres are picked out step by step rather than walked. From down there you can see only those two. The valley walls are high enough that the sun does not reach the plunge pool until late in the morning. When it finally clears the rim it catches the drifting spray and stands a rainbow across the base of the falls. A short walk along the same valley reaches Fiji Waterfall, a triple cascade, and the well-named Hidden Waterfall, which few people bother with. All of this belongs to the village of Sekumpul on the clifftop, which keeps the trail and whose farmers walk visitors down to the floor. The climb out is the harder half, and it puts you back on the platform where the whole group hangs together again, however many the mountain is showing that day.