Beaches in Indonesia

Seventeen thousand islands and consequently every kind of shore, with three patterns recurring across all of them. The sand colour tracks the geology, so a grey beach here is volcanic rather than dirty and is often the better swimming, while the white sand sits on coral and limestone. The monsoon switches which coast is sheltered and brings marine debris onto the western shores between December and March, in volumes that make international news. And the best-known beaches are increasingly managed: Komodo charges park fees that have been revised repeatedly, Nusa Penida's cliff paths injure people regularly, and Bali's south-west coast is patrolled with flags that exist because of the rips. Beyond Bali the register's ground here is thin relative to the country: Lombok, Flores, the Banda islands, Raja Ampat in West Papua and the Mentawais off Sumatra are each a coast in their own right, and Raja Ampat holds the highest recorded marine biodiversity on earth. Practically: the archipelago is vast and inter-island travel takes real time, flights are the way to move and are cancelled often enough to matter, and lifeguard cover exists only on the busiest Balinese beaches.

They spread across five beach worlds, the largest group being two grand resort beaches. Together they account for 9.2 km of shore. · computed from the 6 records below