Thought to be a former hermitage for eleventh-century Hindu priests, Goa Gajah (Elephant Cave), has now become a major tourist attraction, owing more to its proximity to the main Ubud-Gianyar road than to any remarkable atmosphere or ancient features. Besides the cave itself, there's a traditional bathing pool here, as well as a number of ancient stone relics, and the usual collection of stalls selling refreshments and souvenirs. The site is open to the public every dat during daylight hours. As it's a holy place, you'll need to rent a sarong and sash if you havent brought your own. To get to Goa Gajah, either walk or drive the 3km east from Ubud's jalan Peliatan, or take one of the numerous Ubud-Gianyar road and is clearly sign-posted from both directions. You can also walk here from the nearly Yeh Pulu rock carvings, along the irrigation channels that zigzag through the rice-fields, but you'll need the help of one of the young guides who hang around both at Yeh Palu and Goa Gajah.

Descending the steep flight of steps from the back of the car park, you get a good view of the rectangular bathing pool, whose elegant sunken contours dominate the courtyard below. Such pools were usually built at holy sites, either at the source of a holy spring as at Tirta Empul or, like this one, close by a sacred spot so that devotees could cleanse themselves before making offerings or prayers. Local men and women would have bathed here in the segregated make (right-hand) and female (left-hand) sections, under the jets of water from the Petanu tributary channelled through the potruding navels of the full-breasted statues lining its back wall. Although the water still flows, the pools are now maintained for ornamental purposes only.

In comparison with the stately bathing pool, the hillside cave that overlooks it seems rather unexceptional, although the carvings that trumpet its entranceway are certainly impressive, if a little hard to distinguish. The doorway is in fact a huge gaping mouth, framed by the upper jaw of a monstrous rock-carved head that's thought to represent either the earth god Bhoma, or the widow-witch Rangda, or hybrid of the two. Whatever its actual identity, the grotesque image is almost certain to have served both as repeller of evil spirits and as a suggestion that on entering you were being swallowed up into another, holier, world. Early visitors thought it looked like an elephant's head, which is how the cave got its modern name. A whole series of mythical creatures is also said to be carved into the bare rock face to the left and right of the head, but from the ground it's very hard to spot them.

Passing into the monster's mouth, you enter the T-shaped cave, hewn by hand from the rocky hillside to serve as meditation cells, or possibly living quartersfor the priests or ascetics. As with most of Bali's rock-cut monuments, the mythical giant Kebo Iwa is also associated with Goa Gajah, and legends describe how he gouged out the cells and the carvings here with his powerful fingernails, a feat that took him just one night. The dank and dimly lit interior holds little of great interest: a statue of the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesh sits in a niche to the left of the far end, while to the right are three lingga, phallic emblems of the god Siwa.

Outside the cave, in the small pavillion to the left of the monstrous gateway, sits a weatherworn statue of a woman surrounded by a horde of kids. Carved from single block of stone, this piece shows the Balinese folk heroine Men Brayut, a typical village woman whose resolute struggle againts poverty has made her into a saint-like figure in Bali. Men Brayut is known as the goddess Hariti in Buddhist literature, and this statue along with a number of other relics found around Goa Gajah have led archeologists to believe that the site may have a Buddhist as well as Hindu history. You can see some of the other Buddhist fragments by following the concrete steps that climb down the side of the ravine just beyond bathing pool. These include the relief of a multi-tiered stupa carved into a huge fragment of rock, and a couple of small seated stone Buddha images.