Uluru Sacred National Park in The Heart of Australia

The magnetic, marvellous and magnificent Uluru is officially my favourite place in Australia and on my top ten best travel places list.

“This Uluru trip means we are going on a pilgrimage, the Australian way“, I told Jik, my best friend, at the airport while waiting for our flight to Ayers Rocks. She stared back at me as if I had lost it before returning to her laptop screen. It has become a routine, pretty much how we usually start our girl trips, with me saying some absurd things and her ignoring it.

But this time, I was serious about Uluru.

Pilgrimage To Uluru

I feel like Uluru called me.

The first time it caught my attention was in a bookstore in New Zealand, of all places. Once we returned home, I mulled over visiting it for a while before forgetting about Uluru for some time and being called by it again. This time, by a blog post. Finally, I decided to give it a visit, even if just by myself, but at the last minute, Jik joined in.

Hence our conversation in the airport waiting room lounge above. 4 hours later, we reached the small airport of Ayers Rock and hopped into the resort bus immediately afterwards. Ah, the bliss of domestic travel.

Uluru was not a budget trip.

I can’t say that the hotel nor the tours were cheap; even the price for our budget flight ticket was close to a trip back to Jakarta.

At first, I wondered why, but it clicked when we sat down for our fancy dinner, among others. More than half of our dinner guests visited were middle-aged tourists. We shared the table with a semi-retired farmer and his wife, Brenda and Steve, a couple whose next trip is to cruise to the South Pole and another couple who just returned from the car racing saga in Monaco.

Jik, I and our budget airfare were somewhat out of place, but we both agreed that we are lucky to experience Uluru now rather than later in life.

Also, it did help that I always believed that I had an old soul. I semi-fit in. And Uluru fits my old soul travel style.

Goodbye Uluru

Uluru was an expensive but once-in-a-lifetime experience; if you visit Australia for more than a couple of weeks, you’ve got to fly to Uluru again. A long weekend would be enough, but you can experience the bush walk.

Uluru was magnificent! I can’t explain the attraction of a huge rock. I came prepared that travelling to see a rock, one single rock, might be a little overkill. But that mental preparation wasn’t required after all. I was all teary-eyed when I saw a glimpse of Uluru from the plane.

During the long weekend trip, we saw Uluru plenty of times. My favourites were the phenomenal light instalment dinner, the first time I saw it from the sky, the sunset BBQ drop and the sunrise.

I flew home with a pinch of Uluru sand inside my necklace locket to be my grounding tool whenever I am flailing. So far, it has worked and even touched other people with its power. I went to meditation recently. Somehow guided to the dessert, and after all the things were done, the lady asked if that was the sand, and I was like, yes. That was the sand from Uluru.

The magnetic, marvellous and magnificent Uluru is officially my favourite place in Australia and in my top ten best travel places list. In Ayers Rock, we saw the moon and Saturn up and close with telescopes. It was amazing!

Also, I tried kangaroo meat for the first time there, and it was okay.

If I ever leave Australia for an extended period, let’s say a temporary move to Japan, which has been on the Universe’s wish list for a while now, I would come back here to pay homage to Uluru, hoping this time I get to see the Emu in the wild which I missed out on the Pinnacles as well.

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