When is the best time to visit Bali?

Bali has two seasons and about six different right answers, depending on what you came for.

The two seasons, plainly

Dry season runs roughly April to October. Less rain, lower humidity, steadier offshore winds on the west coast. Wet season runs roughly November to March, with the heaviest rain usually in January and February.

Neither season is what northern Europeans expect from the words. Bali sits eight degrees south of the equator, so the temperature barely moves all year: high twenties to low thirties Celsius in the day, low twenties at night, every month. What changes is humidity, rain and sea conditions, not warmth.

If you want the classic version

May, June and September are the best weeks of the year on balance. The rain has stopped, the humidity has dropped, the sea is clear, and the crowds of July and August have either not arrived or have gone home. Accommodation costs less than peak. If someone asks me for one month, I say June.

If you are coming to surf

The west coast — Canggu, Uluwatu, Balangan, Bingin, Padang Padang — works best in dry season, when the trade winds blow offshore there. That is the season everyone knows.

The east coast is the opposite. Nusa Dua, Sanur, Keramas and Serangan come alive in wet season, when the same winds that ruin the west blow offshore on the east. A January trip is not a wasted surf trip. It is a different set of waves and a much emptier line-up.

If you are coming to dive

Visibility around Nusa Penida and Menjangan is generally better in dry season. Mola mola, the oceanic sunfish, are most commonly seen around Nusa Penida between roughly July and October, when cold upwellings push them shallow. Manta rays at Manta Point are a year-round sighting, with no season that guarantees them.

If you want to spend less

February is the cheapest month, followed by late January and early March. It rains, but not in the way people imagine — see what wet season is actually like. Villas that cost 400 dollars a night in August go for half that, restaurants take bookings on the day, and the roads move.

The weeks to avoid, and why

• Mid-July to late August. European and Australian school holidays overlap. Canggu and Seminyak are full, the traffic doubles, and villa rates peak.
• Christmas to the first week of January. The most expensive fortnight of the year, and wet.
• Chinese New Year and the surrounding week, which moves each year.
• Ramadan's final week and the Idul Fitri holiday, when domestic travel across Indonesia peaks and ferries and flights fill. The dates shift about eleven days earlier each year.

The one date that overrides everything

Nyepi, the Balinese day of silence, shuts the entire island for 24 hours. The airport closes. No vehicles, no flights, no leaving your accommodation, no lights at night. It falls in March in most years and the date moves.

This is not a nuisance to plan around so much as a decision to make deliberately. Some people find it the most memorable day of their trip. Others find themselves locked inside a hotel room for a day they had budgeted for Uluwatu. Read what Nyepi actually involves before you book flights near it.

What the season does not change

Traffic is bad all year. The south is busy all year. Prices for land and villas do not soften in February. And rain in Bali is not a day ruined: it usually arrives hard in the afternoon, lasts an hour or two, and leaves the evening clear.

If you are coming to look at property

Then the calculation inverts. February tells you more about a plot than August ever will. You see where the water goes, whether the access road floods, whether the neighbour's runoff crosses the land, and how the build handles three hours of hard rain.

Buyers who only ever view in dry season find all of that out after they have signed. If the trip is a diligence trip rather than a holiday, come in the wet and take the discount on the villa while you are at it. See the due diligence timeline and what to check first.