Bill Bensley's obsession with the colonial-era explorer as a design archetype found its most theatrical expression on a forested ridge above Ubud's Petanu River valley, where Capella Ubud opened in 2018 as a camp — not metaphorically but literally, a collection of 22 tented villas and one treehouse suspended among coconut palms and tropical hardwoods on a steep jungle hillside. The structures sit on raised timber platforms, their dark pointed canopies visible at dusk as warm pools of lamplight punctuating the deep green canopy, the whole ensemble closer to a nineteenth-century expedition base than anything the luxury hotel industry had attempted before in Bali. Inside, Bensley's interiors push the theatrical register as far as it will go without tipping into pastiche. Walls lined in deep crimson ikat fabric, ceilings upholstered in batik-printed textile, carved Balinese doors in gilt and lacquered red flanking four-poster beds draped in grey silk — each tent assembled as a private cabinet of curiosities, the furniture mixing French colonial rattan with antique Javanese woodwork and embroidered Uzbek suzani cushions. The pool deck's bar pavilion carries an elaborate engraved metal canopy above teak decking, its bar stools and bentwood chairs arranged against chevron-tiled pool edges that glow jade-green after dark. The effect is less hotel suite than film set, one where every prop has been sourced rather than manufactured.

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