TRAVERSE Issue 47 - April 2025 | Seite 15

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and bustle with easy access to main streets, a number of cafés, embassies, and the waterfront. Catering to mostly scuba diving enthusiasts, Dive Timor has several room options that will suit everyone. Their bar upstairs, The Castaways, will soon become a favourite place for a cooling beer in the hot afternoon Timorese weather.
Slipping into the Dili way of life comes with ease and yet it’ s the open road we are here for and so aboard a fleet of 150cc machines, finding larger is near on impossible, and besides, seldom required. Small Honda’ s and Yamaha’ s come to the fore when traversing the back tracks of the Timorese landscape.
Dili is an adventure in itself yet it’ s those tracks where the real Timor-Leste begins. Surprisingly, the majority of the country’ s population doesn’ t reside in the major city, the small towns and jungle villages all play a part in the rich diversity of Timor-Leste. More than a million people form a connection of cultures that see more than 30 indigenous languages spoken alongside the national languages of Portuguese and Tetum, as does Catholicism sit in somewhat harmony with the traditional beliefs that reflect a strong following of Animism, or the belief that everything plays a part in both the physical and spiritual world.
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