Jungle trekking in northern Sumatra: Part 2
Following a few days of well deserved rest and recuperation in Bukit Lawang, we headed out on our second Sumatran jungle trek, this one from the miniscule settlement of Batu Katak. We’d arranged this through a genial 30 year-old guy called Ruddy, the proud owner of a newish guesthouse with a beautiful view out over the Berkail River and into the western fringes of the Gunung Leuser park.
Berkail River from our guesthouse, Batu Katak
Ruddy on the bouncing suspension bridge
He introduced us to our guide, Bahaghia, whose name translates directly to the English word ‘happy’. “Hello, I’m Happy,” he said, rather unconvincingly. But despite initial impressions, Happy turned out to be a wonderful guide and companion on the trek and we were most glad of his company. We were also accompanied by a younger lad called Harry, whose main occupation, like Roy from the last trek, was to vigorously fan Helen whenever we stopped for a rest. Fanning ladies in the jungle is clearly a thing here.
Happy
Though our walk took us through the same park we’d trekked through from Bukit Lawang, here the terrain was markedly different. The jungle was still immensely hot and humid, but the abundance of awkwardly shaped karst outcrops made footing even more treacherous. The pace was particularly slow as we gingerly twisted our way through sinister little grottoes of rock, slippery with mosses and lichens and overlooked by towering vegetation. It was like something from a Brothers’ Grimm fairytale. We half expected to encounter trolls or cackling witches. Luckily none materialised and, like our first trek, we found ourselves totally alone.
We did see and hear a good deal from the gibbons though, both Black and White-Handed varieties, plus a few Thomas Leaf monkeys, the latter a most peculiar looking langur that looks like a simian fusion of a punk and a gremlin. Again we got incredibly lucky and came across another couple of orangutans, this time a mother and baby who retreated to a massive tree and fell asleep in each others’ arms.
Our most unusual encounter, however, was with the biggest flower in the world,* the wonderfully and quite appropriately named Amorphophallus Titanum (or Titan Flower), a plant endemic to Sumatra. We’d been told that there was a good chance we might see one in bloom (which occurs rarely and for only a few days) and made part of our day into a quest to find one. Towards the end of the afternoon’s walking we did indeed find a lovely looking specimen, though unfortunately it was still a few days away from unfurling its protective petal casing and releasing its trademark smell of rotting cabbages and fish. Ours was around a metre tall, but they can grow to a whopping 3 metres in the right environment.
* Technically speaking it’s the largest and tallest unbranched flower cluster in the world. The world’s largest single bloom flower is the Raffelesia Arnoldi (aka the ‘corpse lily’ as it stinks of rotting flesh), also found in Sumatra, but alas not in bloom when we were there….
Having had our fill of phallic flowers, Helen and Harry took a separate path leading back to Batu Katak. Helen wasn’t too keen on spending another night in mortal agony and wondering what was nibbling her boot laces, so Happy and myself ploughed on alone for another hour, stopping at one point to meet a family of five panning for gold in a nearby river. Some were swirling large pans about and picking out glinting specks, others were hauling spades of river-bed debris onto a ramp on which several pieces of carpet were placed. Gold, being heavy, gets caught low down in the fibres and the soil and stone washes over. They showed us their findings for the day, kept in a plastic box half-full of water – 8 or 9 tiny nuggets. They were most pleased. That, apparently, was a very good day indeed.
Helen admires the Amorphophallus
Gold prospectors
Gold prospecting, Gunung Leuser NP
Gold prospecting, Gunung Leuser NP
Another half-hour later and we arrived at the night’s campsite, a rather similar affair to the last one, but with a rather comfy mattress and a mosquito net!! Too late to go & get Helen!! Before the inevitable rains came (it seems to occur at roughly the same time everyday here and is always heavy), I had a quick ‘shower’. The camp chef handed me a metal bowl which I used to hastily chuck water over myself, standing naked in the nearby shallow river. The deluge was just starting as I ran back to the shelter and within seconds torrents of rain were smashing into the ground and battering the plastic roof above me with a deafening roar.
Campsite, Gunung Leuser NP
Chef takes a break, Gunung Leuser NP
A better night of sleep this time and after another morning of animal spotting, Happy and I descended to the main river where we’d arranged to meet a lad carrying inner-tubes to float back down to base. Unlike the tubing route from Bukit Lawang, the route here was a lot longer and away from any sign of human habitation. It felt primal and, in the correct sense of the word, awesome, with long stretches of raging water overlooked by enormous rocks and seemingly endless jungle. We broke our journey half-way back at a small beach, as a local man had told the inner-tube lad that a Titanum was in bloom nearby. We got excited at the prospect, but after 20 minutes of trying to clamber back into the jungle up slopes littered with felled trees and forest debris we realised we couldn’t get to it and reluctantly had to backtrack…
The tubing lad arrives, Gunung Leuser NP
Fully dried, recovered and reunited, we enjoyed a few other delights of Batu Katak, with Ruddy and Happy in tow over the next day or so. We met ladies from a cooperative set up to produce traditional medicine, the ingredients of which seemed to always consist of chopped ginger and lemongrass and some mysterious ‘leaves’. They were convinced it could cure pretty much anything.
We also asked to visit a local man who runs an apiary and were introduced to Kelengi Sitepu, who was busy building a small wooden box-hive. He brought out a section of bamboo he’d retrieved from the forest in which he knew there was an active colony of 3mm long Trigona dwarf bees. Carefully splitting the bamboo lengthways, he extracted the contents and transferred them to his box, searching for the queen as he did so and occasionally handing over small dark, rubbery globules full of ultra-sweet honey. It was a little strange, sitting on the ground surrounded by hundreds of absolutely minuscule (thankfully stingless) bees, eating the fruits of their hard labour directly from the nest.
Cooperative ladies making magic from ginger
Batu Katak
Kelengi’s hives, Batu Katak
Trigona bee hive, Batu Katak village
Kelengi repatriates bees from a bamboo nest
Happy honey hunting
Batu Katak village
Batu Katak itself (the name means ‘Stone Frog’, weirdly), is a bit of an unsung success story. A national cement firm was due to open an operation here, but after a sustained campaign by the locals completely reversed its decision and helped the village re-invent itself as a mini jungle trekking centre. Villagers who had once participated in the illegal logging trade, or who had cut down forest or hunted its animals were re-trained as guides and guesthouse operators – now half the population earn their living from trades that actively preserve the jungle and its attractions. Despite this, the place remains tiny and unspoiled – to the outsider at least, you’d never know. Clearly they’ve got it completely right in a country where rampant over-exploitation and tacky commercialism is often the outcome.
We left Batu Katak, without doubt our favourite place in Sumatra, with some reluctance and headed for Berastagi, a town nestled in the foothills of two active volcanos, Mts Sinabung and Sibayak, and one that offered respite from the humidity of the jungle lowlands further north. There’s a very small but definite foreign tourist trail here, and Berastagi is on almost everyone’s list of things to do. In some respects it’s unsurprising as it offers the chance to climb Mount Sibayak in the wee hours and appreciate sunrise from the top, overlooking Mount Sinabung in the distance. It sounded wonderful and too good to miss.
But after living out our jungle trekking / orangutan spotting fantasies mainly in glorious isolation we found ourselves crushed under the weight of domestic Indonesian mass tourism. We’d expected our little party of 6 in a mini-van, bouncing over deep rutted roads to the start of the hiking trail at 4am, to be the only people going that morning. How wrong can you be? We’d come on a weekend and were met with hundreds of Indonesians puffing up the steep trail or racing past us on trial-bikes. When we got to within a few hundred metres of the summit we encountered a camp area, full of hundreds of tents and kids intent on making as much noise as possible and stumbling around the muddy trails in flip-flops. We made it to the summit with our guide, an overly enthusiastic lad whose repertoire of oft-told jokes was beginning to grate and stood on a tiny patch of ground to watch a weak sun illuminate the scene. It could have been fabulous, but it seriously wasn’t. The photos below might look good, but they unfortunately don’t reflect the mood (and cut-out most of the throng). A trip to a local hot-springs on the way back and the lovely company of the other foreign tourists in our van cheered us somewhat at least, but it won’t win the prize of ‘best thing to do in Sumatra’ by a long chalk.
Mount Sinabung from Mount Sibayak
Fumeroles and solfataras, Mount Sibayak
Mount Sinabung from Mount Sibayak
Mount Sibayak crater lake
The town of Berastagi, however, was surprisingly devoid of anyone other than locals going about their business. Most people seem to come here in the afternoon, get up early for the volcano hike and then leave, which is a real shame as they miss a great little town full of friendly, welcoming people who go out of their way to say hello or practice their English. We spent some lovely hours just sitting around in coffee shops, enjoying some of the best coffee in the world. We also visited the nearby Lumbini Temple in a dilapidated local minibus. A bright gold-coloured replica of the Buddhist Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon, it wasn’t really up to much, but the other people there were wonderful. We had many photo stops and broken English conversations and even crashed a wedding party outside the temple gates, becoming the star attraction for a few minutes at least. We were invited to sit and eat, but the food, to be frank, looked seriously bad and we feared for our stomachs….
Berestagi’s famous ‘cabbage’ roundabout
Impromptu English lessons
Pop-up durian cafe with a smell that would curdle milk
At Lumbini Temple, Berestagi
Lumbini Temple wedding
Lumbini Temple wedding
Lumbini Temple wedding
At Lumbini Temple, Berestagi
Berestagi market
Berestagi market
From Berastagi we headed further south in another shared taxi, this time to the supposedly bucolic shores of Lake Toba, at an elevation likely to be much more comfortable for our Western bodies. Another stop on the mini tourist trail, the lake offered the chance to relax, take in some local Batak culture and enjoy the cooler temperatures. We stopped on the way at a little village, Lingga, which has 20 or so traditional Karo tribal houses. Here we were greeted by a local impromptu guide who showed us the interior of a square wooden house in which lived 30 people, all in cramped, dark and rather pungent conditions. He also demonstrated how local women give birth, from the step to the house on a raised platform. Legs akimbo, he parodied the parturition process by grunting, grimacing and generally gyrating about. We half expected him to produce a baby doll by way of a tangible prop from between his legs. I wish I’d suggested that to him for next time.
Karo guide demonstrating his personal birthing technique
Traditional Karo tribal house
Lake Toba
We eventually arrived at our guesthouse in the little town of Tuktuk on the island of Samosir in the centre of Lake Toba, via a ferry that handily took us to a little private jetty. A wonderful little place, built in traditional Batak style with long sweeping, saddle-shaped roofs and a fabulous little balcony overlooking the waters. Here we gladly descended into a state of abject apathy, relatively speaking of course, and spent our days finalising plans for the rest of the trip. Not that it was all that peaceful mind. The lake gets a great deal of domestic visitors too and inevitably in these parts, that means a good deal of noise. Jetskis, speedboats towing ridiculous banana dinghies with shrieking riders, ferries and pleasure boats blasting out Indonesian pop music – all starting at about 6:30 in the morning. Luckily it didn’t last all day. One evening a group of domestic tourists decided to have a rave in the grounds of the hotel next door, with their own private sound equipment and blasted out awful noise til 2am. Luckily we were also up a lot of the night watching the England v DR Congo match in the hotel’s kitchen, going through our own little agonies for 75 minutes….
We did venture out on occasion, though the town had little other than pizza joints to offer and the nearby sights were always crawling with Indonesians more intent on arsing about with silly dancing games than taking in their own cultural heritage. We also had a night out at the Samosir International Music festival, and were treated to the dulcet tones of ‘Lyodra’, a local Sumatran girl and recent winner of ‘Indonesian Idol’ who to be fair had a most fine voice indeed. Pretty much everyone at the festival, and there were a lot, knew all the lyrics to all the songs and belted them out as if their lives depended on it. Most of the other acts were somewhat dire and reminded us of formulaic Eurovision fodder, but it was fun and everyone else seemed to absolutely love it….
Tuktuk cemetary, Lake Toba
Batak Tribal Museum, Lake Toba
We caught a shared taxi back to Medan and spent the last few hours in Sumatra wandering around its humid streets. A distinctly workaday city with not much by way of distraction, but a pleasant day or so nonetheless. Even here, in the biggest city on the island, folks were incredibly welcoming and fervently enquired after our nationality after every standard ‘Hello Mister!’ greeting.
Medan streets
1930’s Tip-Top Cafe, Medan
Raya Al-Mashun mosque, Medan
On to the island of Sulawesi next, where we hope to be able to renew our visas and spend time attending traditional funerals in the Tana Toraja region…….
Simon (6th July 2026)
Brilliant photos as always, interesting to see some of the women without hair coverings, is that usual?
Thanks Angela. It is usual yes – whislt Indonesia as a whole is a predominantly Muslim country, there are many Christians of various denominations here too. In the vast majority of cases they all get along very nicely too
Enjoy the funerals!!!!!
Thank you!