Gili Islands

Three islets without fresh water: the long silence of the Gilis

It's hard to picture now, lying in a hammock facing the turquoise sea, but for almost all of their history the Gili Islands were uninhabited. The reason is simple and brutal: they had no fresh water. These three coral-and-sand islets off the northwest coast of Lombok had no springs, rivers or natural wells, which made permanent settlement impossible. They were basically sandbanks covered in scrub and mangroves, surrounded by reefs teeming with marine life but with nothing to offer anyone who wanted to stay and live there.

For centuries, the Gilis were little more than a stopover. Bugis fishermen, the great seafaring people of Sulawesi —famous throughout Indonesia for their 'pinisi' schooners and their maritime tradition—, called at these islands on their voyages through the archipelago, fishing in their waters before sailing on. But nobody founds a village where there's nothing to drink. While Bali and Lombok developed kingdoms, temples and rice fields, the Gilis remained in near-total silence, untouched by history.

That isolation, which looks like a luxury today, was for centuries a sentence to irrelevance. The name itself gives it away: 'gili' simply means 'little island' in Sasak, the language of Lombok. They had no identity of their own beyond being 'the little islands' across the water. It would take until well into the second half of the 20th century for human hands, and a political decision, to change the fate of these three specks of sand forever.

Coconut palms, settlers and prisoners: settlement in the seventies

Permanent settlement of the Gilis only began in the 1970s, and not spontaneously but through a land policy. In 1971, the governor of Lombok, Wasita Kusuma, promoted the creation of coconut plantations on the islands and handed out land rights. On Gili Trawangan, the largest, one hundred hectares in the south went to a private company (PT Rinta) and another hundred in the centre to another (PT Generasi Jaya), while about one hundred hectares in the north were set aside for local settlers: mostly Sasak people from Lombok, along with migrants from Sulawesi who arrived in those years looking for land to farm and fish.

Getting the first coconut harvests off the ground took labour, and it came from an unexpected place: prison. Between 1974 and 1979, some 350 inmates from the overcrowded prison in Mataram, Lombok's largest city, were sent to Gili Trawangan to work on the plantations. Once they had served their sentences, many of those prisoners chose to stay on the island, becoming —together with the Sasak and Bugis settlers— the first permanent residents of a place that until recently had had no inhabitants at all.

And so the founding community of the Gilis was born from an unusual mix: Sasak farmers, Bugis sailors and ex-convicts, all planting coconuts on three islands without fresh water (which had to be brought over from the mainland or collected from the rain). It was a hard, isolated, subsistence life, a far cry from the image of a holiday paradise. Nobody, in those years of plantations and heat, could have imagined what was about to happen.

From homestay to party island: the arrival of the backpackers

Tourism arrived on tiptoe. The first accommodation for travellers on Gili Trawangan was a modest homestay opened in 1982 by a local known as Pak Majid ('Pak' is a respectful form of address, a bit like 'Mr'). At first there were only a handful of adventurous backpackers who had heard, by word of mouth, about some paradise islands off Lombok that were dirt cheap and still off every tourist map. With no reliable electricity, no running water and hardly any services, the Gilis were a secret passed between the most intrepid travellers.

From the late eighties to the late nineties, Gili Trawangan earned a very different reputation from the one it has today: that of a party island. Its remoteness, small population and complete absence of police turned it into a place where drugs circulated freely and parties ran until dawn. It was the era of Southeast Asia's 'party islands', an alternative backpacker circuit for people seeking remote beaches and nights without rules. That reputation would take years to soften.

Alongside the parties, something far more lasting grew: diving. During the nineties, the richness of the reefs around the Gilis —with turtles, reef sharks and abundant coral— began to draw divers from all over the world. The first dive schools opened, and the islands gained prestige as one of the most accessible and affordable places on the planet to get a diving certificate. Little by little, diving and beach tourism displaced the party reputation, and the Gilis began to turn into the destination they are today.

The Gilis today: a crowded paradise, car-free and with its limits

In barely two generations, three arid, empty islets became one of the most famous beach destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Today the Gilis welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, with Gili Trawangan devoted to diving, nightlife and sunsets; Gili Meno as a romantic hideaway; and Gili Air as the balance between local life and tourism. The historic decision to keep the islands free of cars and motorbikes —only bicycles and horse-drawn 'cidomo'— became their defining feature and a magnet for travellers looking for calm without engines.

That success brings serious challenges, nearly all of them inherited from the islands' original sin: the lack of water and resources. Fresh water is still a problem (much of it is desalinated or imported), waste and sewage management is under enormous pressure, and unchecked construction threatens the balance. The reefs, battered by tourism, coral 'bleaching' caused by warming seas and old destructive fishing practices, are the focus of restoration projects, including artificial reefs such as the underwater sculptures of Gili Meno.

The islands have also known tragedy: in August 2018, a series of devastating earthquakes shook Lombok and the Gilis, killing hundreds of people in the region, causing widespread damage and forcing the evacuation of thousands of tourists from the islands. The Gili community, hardened by adversity since its beginnings, rebuilt and got back on its feet, as it would again after tourism came to a halt during the 2020-21 pandemic. For today's traveller, knowing this story gives the paradise extra meaning: behind the hammocks and the turtles are three islands that went from not even having water to drink to becoming, against all odds, one of the planet's dream spots.

📚 Bibliography

• Wikipedia (EN) — «Gili Islands»: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gili_Islands
• Wikipedia (EN) — «Gili Trawangan»: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gili_Trawangan
• Wikipedia (EN) — «Bugis»: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugis
• Wikipedia (EN) — «Lombok»: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombok
• Wikipedia (EN) — «2018 Lombok earthquakes»: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Lombok_earthquakes
• Broken Compass — «About Gili Trawangan»: https://the-broken-compass.com/gili-trawangan/about-gili-trawangan/
• Inside Indonesia — «Trouble in Paradise»: https://www.insideindonesia.org/trouble-in-paradise
• Indonesia.travel — «Gili Trawangan»: https://www.indonesia.travel/in/en/travel-ideas/adventure/gili-trawangan
• Underwater Sculpture — Jason deCaires Taylor: https://www.underwatersculpture.com/