Jungle trekking in northern Sumatra: Part 1
Seeing orangutans in a sanctuary, like the one in Sarawak, special though that undoubtedly is, is one thing. Seeing them totally wild is another proposition altogether. This was our major reason for coming to Sumatra, one of the last places in the world where you can get fairly close to our hairy orange cousins where they don’t expect someone to lob them a mango. Though we’ve been lucky enough to see them wild once before (again in Borneo on the Kinabatangan River in Sabah), they were at a considerable distance away, building nests in the high treetops. Here we were hoping to get close enough to look them in the eyes.
But a privilege like that comes at a cost – hours of trekking with no guarantee of success in hot, steamy jungles covered in mud and leeches and streaming sweat continuously from every pore in your body. Sounded just up our street.
We decided to hedge our bets and attempt to track them down from two different locations, though both were in the absolutely vast Gunung Leuser National Park in the state of Northern Sumatra. The first was from the village of Bukit Lawang and the other from the tiny hamlet of Batu Katak, about an hour’s drive apart.
Hiking in Tualang Gepang
Bukit Lawang is seriously geared-up for ape based tourism and has many small guesthouses lined up along a stretch of the Bahorok River. There used to be an orangutan rehabilitation centre here too, until 2003. But a spate of illegal logging in the area caused a series of landslides that dammed the river and created an enormous lake. The dam subsequently broke and a 20 metre high wave raced downstream, wiping out everything in its path, including the centre and 90% of the village. Nowadays, the rescued orangutans in the immediate area largely fend for themselves, but are very much inured to the presence of humans. The vast majority of tourists who come here can thus get near to the apes and other monkeys, but in many ways their habituation makes the experience seem like visiting a safari park. We came across the unedifying spectacle of fifty plus gawping tourists scrabbling for position and snapping away at bored looking animals, themselves being watched by mildly amused Indonesian forest guides.
Luckily though, there was another way. A few places in the village run trips to the nearby Tualang Gepang / Bukit Kencur section of the National Park. Here you’re pretty much guaranteed to be the only humans around and the animals you encounter are naturally wary of you and invariably keep a safe distance. We started our two day trip early and still a little sleepy from the fatigue of our journey from Malacca to Kuala Lumpur, then over to Medan and a 4 hour drive over shocking roads to Bukit Lawang the day before. A 40 minute ride on the back of a couple of motorbikes later we arrived at a tiny lodge and started the trek proper.
The night before it had rained. And it had rained a lot. It was the kind of rain that forces you to step outside and marvel at it – huge, torrential, mesmerising. Fortunately it had stopped before morning, but it had made the terrain extremely slippery and had inspired the entire leech population of Indonesia to come out and party on passing white flesh. We were daubed by our guides (Ando and Roy) with tobacco water as a natural method of deterrence. Our boots and sock-tops and tucked-in trousers were rubbed fastidiously, but really to little avail. Within minutes we had loads of them all over us. Whenever we stopped to take off our boots for river crossings, there were 20 or so in each. We caught most of them on our skin, but I still had streams of blood cascading down my arms and hands from the ones I’d caught too late. I missed one entirely on my belly and removed it just before it had had its fill. A now fat, juicy and dark slippery blob, it resisted several attempts to prise it off with sweating fingers. When it did succumb, it left a hole that bled for almost an hour and a tiny bruise that grew to be almost two inches in diameter (not to mention delicious shades of yellow and dark purple) over the course of several days.
Helen lets Roy daub her boots
The fatigue of recent travels and the incredibly oppressive humidity, plus a bout of stomach trouble for both of us that morning, was starting to take its toll as we trudged up and down one jungle path after another. We felt in pretty poor shape to be honest. An occasional glimpse of black gibbons got Ando and Roy excited, but having heard and smelled us from a country mile away, they rapidly swung off and out of sight. A large black squirrel overhead equally failed to raise our spirits as it disdained to make our acquaintance. Roy gamely fanned Helen’s face with a selection of jungle leaves in an attempt to keep her cool, but it merely moved the sweat around.
River crossing, Tualang Gepang
Then out of nowhere, and just at the point we were wondering why we hadn’t taken the easy option, Ando spotted a large male orangutan in a nest a couple of metres off the ground in a nearby tree. He was so excited he forgot how to speak English. We nodded as he garbled in Bahasa and followed him to a nearby vantage spot. The male, an almost fully grown and magnificent specimen indeed, was clearly spooked. He used his hand to make several ‘kiss-squeak’ noises, a clear sign of his annoyance at our presence, and quickly headed upwards into the further reaches of the tree canopy. But he didn’t go that far away. We were able to see him in his full glory as he warily watched us from above, flinching slightly as he heard the noise from my camera shutter clanking away. He watched us. We watched him. For about half an hour. Eventually he relaxed a little, turned his back toward us and swayed his legs back and forth like a bored teenager. It was magical in the extreme. All discomforts temporarily forgotten as we realised what we were seeing – a massive wild ape, capable of rendering us limb from limb if it desired, both wary of us and wondering, no doubt, what on earth we were thinking. We wondered what his thoughts were too.
As encounters go, it doesn’t get much better than that. To say our outlook on the day had lifted would be a massive understatement indeed. Our camp lunch a few hours later was wonderful – a fabulous mie goreng (fried noodles) served in banana leaves and sumptuous pineapple pieces speckled with passion fruit. It kept us going. Unsurprisingly no other sightings that day came anywhere as close to being that spectacular, not that we were bothered in the slightest. Nevertheless we were somewhat relieved to reach our camp for the night. Exhilaration lasts a while, but not indefinitely. Fatigue and discomfort eventually overtook us again and we looked on our tree-framed abode, initially at least, as if it were the Ritz.
Break for lunch, Tualang Gepang
Situated at a small pebble beach, the camp consisted of 3 wooden shacks, one for cooking and eating, and two for sleeping. The two sleeping quarters were covered in black plastic sheeting and had very thin plastic mats on which we spread our liner sheets. A dip and swim in the river after the oppression of the day’s heat was unimaginably good and we later lounged on the beach as our guides supplied us with fresh tea and coffee cooked up on the camp’s open fire by a lad called Organ, who’d materiallised out of nowhere to make our dinner. It started to rain, and like the night before, it rained as hard as it could. Unlike our Sarawak experience at least here the camp was watertight (ish). Not that it mattered. Here you’re either wet from sweating, wet from swimming or wet from the rain & humidity. Either way, you’re permanently wet. We hung our dripping trousers and t-shirts on a line inside. They dried not a jot.
Organ brings cooking equipment to the camp
Campsite, Tualang Gepang
Breakfast at the camp, Tualang Gepang
The night was tough. A lovely meal with the two guides and the cook (we had fried tempeh – fermented soybeans pressed into a dense cake – fried in a spicy sambal sauce, a vegetable soup and boiled water to drink), and a rather passionate discourse on the history of the World Cup, but followed by an ordeal of pain and discomfort on the hard surface of the camp floor. Helen suffered more than I did and got precious little sleep. Several things (water bottles, walking poles etc) were knocked over in the night, though by what we couldn’t see, though a few scuttles were heard. We ‘awoke’, at least, to a beautiful morning, but sore and fatigued once more.
Organ cooked us a pancake and we greedily dispatched it, with more fresh tea and coffee, on the beach fronting the river, still damp and aching. Another few hours of trekking back to the place we’d left the motorbikes, then we were back on the road, heading for the semi-wild area for another days’ trekking. Ando had warned us not to anticipate too much. He told us, in fact, that we’d hate this part. He was exaggerating a little, but not much. From seeing no-one else for 24 hours, we entered the world of the domestic and international tourist considerably more intent on bagging the best shots of semi-tame animals than we were. We didn’t last too long here to be fair. Though we managed to get away from the hordes (it was a Sunday and all of Sumatra was here), we opted for a shorter walk and headed over to the river for the standard return journey to Bukit Lawang by ‘jungle taxi’.
OJ auditions for new ‘Ready Brek’ advert, Gunung Leuser NP
Thomas Leaf monkey, Gunung Leuser NP
As we waited for our transportation to be constructed, we had a nasi goreng lunch on the rocks at the riverside. Sat beside us was a group of Indonesian women, all sitting fully clothed and hijab’d in the water, giggling and splashing around as if they were kids. We took their photo and they went slightly crazy. Our ride, now complete, consisted of a large tractor tyre inner-tube, with an elaborate rope arrangement forming a latticed seating area in the hole. Two other, smaller inner-tubes were lashed to it, forming a driving platform at the front and a steering platform at the rear. The idea was to plonk yourself in the larger tube and enjoy the white water rapids on the river back to town. Ando and Roy formed front and rear respectively and armed with bamboo poles ensured we stayed clear of rocks. It was fun, and we were glad of the cool waters even if they were hitting us in the face half the time.
A tough couple of days in heat and humidity at levels even we’d not experienced before. The cold shower back at our digs was a joy that can’t be adequately described. We sat on the floor of the bathroom under the large bamboo pipe sticking out of the wall and washed ourselves and our stinking clothes under a small cascade of coolness. I’d already somehow managed to catch a cold. We considered for a moment whether we should bother with the next trek or not. Were we prepared to go through it all again knowing the the many, many discomforts we’d have to endure? Damn right we were…
Footnote: When I suggested that we wanted to look orangutans in the eye, I didn’t mean it entirely literally. Making eye contact, like with all apes and monkeys, can be perceived as a direct threat and can spark very aggressive behaviour if you’re not careful. In Bukit Lawang I caught a macaque trying to steal some of our clothes from a washing line and stared at it once I’d chased it off. It stared back at me and adopted an expression that suggested I might have a fight on my hands. “Come on then, if you think you’re hard enough…” it said, silently. At least it left my soggy pants alone.
Foodnote: We also did a cookery class whilst we were in Bukit Lawang. We biked up to an eco-lodge situated near the trek start point and were amused to find that our instructor for the occasion was none other than Organ, our trek chef from a few nights back. We sat on mats on the floor, peeling potatoes with a machete and mashing garlic with a large pebble, then cooked outside on a large wok. We made fried tofu sambal, spicy potato cakes, and banana palm curry. Totally delicious and in lovely company. Alas, it didn’t do much for the bowels though….
“So if I eat this, I’ll be able to sh*t through the eye of a needle, eh?”
Simon (24th June 2026)
Well hope you feel better after the leeches in the olden days doctors used to put leeches on poorly parts to release the bad blood.so you might feel a bit better.its like cupping now adays.fabulous photos as usual. Keep treking. XX ❣️