Every day, thousands of tourists arrive at Gili Trawangan, one of three small resort isles (gili means “small island” in the indigenous Sasak language) parked off Lombok’s northwest coast. But only a fraction of that number venture to the Southern Gilis, a necklace of 13 mostly uninhabited specks of land peppering the quiet waters off the Sekatong Peninsula. Accessible from Bali by speedboat, they also offer an ideal starting point for my quest to circumnavigate Lombok’s 250-kilometer-long coastline in a kayak.
The journey is not without risk. I’ve already been warned that towering sea cliffs and razor-sharp coral reefs make Lombok’s south coast unnavigable for a craft like mine: a hard-edged, high-tech inflatable
