The World Odyssey of a Balinese Prince

Born in 1919, Prince made Djelantik witnessed pivotal moments of history: the twilight of the feudal age, the Second World War in Nazi-occupied Holland, Indonesia’s long battle for independence from four hundred years of Dutch colonial rule, and finally, the great changes provoked on his island by unbridled development.

Driven by an early passion for medicine the prince set sail for Europe to study at the University of Amsterdam. His calling then took him to a far-flung corners of the planet, where he encountered everything from a pirate ambush in the South China Sea and a night attack by a famished army of rats, to a deadly volcanic eruption and his arrest by Saddam Hussein’s secret police. When he return to Bali in the mid-1970s, his public identity as a doctor took precedence over his royal lineage and he was known simply as Dr. Djelantik on the island. The doctor implemented the successful campaign which finally eradicated malaria from Bali and established the island’s first hospital.