Stunning (and scary) Sumatra

We didn't know much at all about Sumatra before we arrived, but the name conjured up all sorts of wild, tropical images – rainforests, monkeys and waterfalls, and possibly tribal locals in war paint wielding huge spears. And although we didn’t get eaten by cannibals, it was just as fantastic and romantic as we imagined. From Medan, the capital, we sped north-west by bus to a little town called Bukit Lawang. The town grew up around an orang-utan rehabilitation centre which closed 15 years ago but the feeding platform was still there and highly active with around 20 semi-wild orang-utans visiting it twice a day for their fix of milk and bananas.

But before we even got a glimpse of the forest-men, we were stunned by our first impressions of Bukit Lawang, a tiny, bamboo-constructed collection of huts nestled on the banks of a roaring river, with great, lush rainforested hills looming over it. The locals were mostly smiling, friendly women and their kids, offering cheap but tasty grub from simple warungs with the most magnificent fruit salads we’ve ever had. Our room was positioned right over the river bank, and the room itself was like something from Heals – we slept in a great, carved mahogany bed beneath a draping mozzy net, with a balcony overlooking the rainforest. All for less than ten pounds a night.

Above: the river crossing to the orangutan centre. The whole of BL was surrounded by rainforest like this, with the river running through it. One morning we awoke to watch the orangutans ambling along the opposite riverbank, and on another day an entire troop of monkeys (we counted over 100 animals) clambered over the rocks upriver!

The morning after we arrived we got up at dawn for a rainforest trek, via the orang-utan feeding platform. It was one of the best days of our trip so far and also of our lives. At 9am we stood about 2 metres away from a female orang-utan, watching her baby play with the milk cup and munch on bananas.

We didn't even download this picture from google images, we were that close!

After that we spent the morning trekking through the rainforest, swinging on vines, spying the fauna and flora (including some ginormous prehistoric looking ants) and for lunch we stopped and swam in a waterfall, with a rice-in-banana-leaf lunch, and lots of mouth-watering fruit.

With our jungle guides Obiwan and Cucumber - big names make up for small stature

I forgot to bring a hat so Cucumber made one for me

The afternoon was a slow amble through the rainforest to our pick-up point on the riverbank where we had a refreshing swim before launching onto the river in a home-made raft made from old truck tyres, which delivered us straight to the door of our room. The only not-amazing moment was when Andy was offered the chance to steer the boat and bonked me on the head with a massive stick.

Having had such an incredible experience, we were both feeling so optimistic and positive that when later on that evening, sitting over dinner, a man called Jansen with a bag arrived and offered to sell us some wood carvings he’d made, we decided to go one better and signed up for a 3 day, 9-hrs a day course to learn traditional Indonesian woodcarving. What we didn’t anticipate was that this would involve sitting in a posture somewhere between the lotus and birthing positions for 3 entire days, using our feet as a vice and primitive metal and wooden tools to fashion what apparently would end up as works of art from two bits of wood that could have come straight out of my dad’s log shed. Andy decided to make a spirit mask traditional to the Batuk tribe, and I decided to make an orangutan.

Andy assumes the position...

The tools of our new-found trade

After day one we regretted it, after day two Andy had seriously damaged his coccyx and I was certain the orang-utan I was making looked more like a wonky gorilla. But by the end of day three, we somehow, with a little help from Jansen, had two finished, rather beautiful woodcarvings that actually looked a bit like they were meant to!

Day 1...


Day 2...


Day 3!

We were pretty exhausted after the course (as you can see from Andy's face), so took the next day off and did a little river tubing. This basically involves throwing yourself down the river at top speed on a rubber tyre. We’d done tubing already in Austria on Honeymoon, with helmets, wetsuit, life jacket and a safety guide. Here we just had the tyre and – if you were really a novice – a big stick to stop you hurtling into the rocks. Our only safety briefing was ‘Don’t go as far as the big dam. You might die.’

To quote Barbara, ‘Life is experience’, so we thought we’d give it a go, anyway, but then a massive overhead storm erupted without any warning just as we entered the water. It was too late to go back – all the locals were watching – so we leapt in. I was utterly terrified and screaming my head off, until I was suddenly made to look like a great big wimp when two tiny pre-school children, seeing the funny white people clearly not doing it right, ran parallel to us along the river bank, threw off their clothes and dived onto their own tyres!


As fun, magic and mesmerising as Bukit Lawang was, it also provided our first taste of the dark side to living in nature’s paradise, which is something we’ve since felt all over Indonesia. 6 years ago the river here experienced a flash flood which killed a vast number of the inhabitants. Every time it rained and the river rose it sparked a panic attack from me and a quick visit outside with the head torch to check whether our room was afloat, while further upstream a team of men battled an enormous heap of mud from a week-old landslide which had hit one of the guesthouses, with a further, larger devastating landslide predicted within the following week. It made us realise that we’re not used to dealing with real, life-threatening danger that often. Life there is never guaranteed, but perhaps for that reason it’s also not controlled by petty laws, or safety measures, and in many ways is much more free. Either way we loved it, and for anyone who dreams of seeing orangutans up close and personal, this is definitely the place to go.