Berastagi and Lake Toba

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After another night in Medan after Bukit Lawang, we we're up early to take the bus to Berastagi in the Karo Highlands. We arrived at midday, glad to be in the cooler highlands after the jungle heat and Medan madness. That afternoon we attempted to make our way to the traditional Karo Batak (The Batak people are the original tribes people of Sumatra) village of Lingga. After initially finding it impossible to ascertain which bemo went to the village, we met two nice Indonesian lads, Jan and Fernando, who are learning to become Christian pastors. Jan spoke excellent english and they helped us find the right bemo and then decided to accompany us to the village. This turned out to be a great stroke of luck, as when we arrived Jan acted as interpreter for us when we met the village chief, and we learnt a lot about the traditional Karo Batak houses and how the whole village used to work together to build the houses, we also got to see inside the chief's house. Jan told us that the Karo villagers follow their own fusion of christianity and animism. On the way back to Berastagi, Jan helped us learn some Indonesian phrases, and the other Indonesian people in the bemo we really happy to see us learning their language and one old guy said he couldn't believe how quickly we picked it up and pronounced it all.

The next day we got up really early to make the climb to the summit of the local volcano, Gunung Sibayek (2,098m). It was a really cool experience going up there, not the toughest climb but in all it took us 6 hours to get up there and back down. The landscape at the top was very weird, almost how you imagine the surface of the moon. The volcano is also slightly active still, with many sulphuric vents steaming at high pressure, creating a lovely smell of rotten eggs. The highlight had to be having our nasi goreng lunch on the rim of the crater, with a view looking across the highlands to the other volcano, Gunung Sinabung (2,430m).

We were up early again the next day, with aching legs, to catch a series of 3 buses to get to Lake Toba which took about 5 hours. Lake Toba is the largest lake in SE Asia and was formed about 30,000 years ago by a truly enormous volcano which erupted and then collapsed in on itself, apparently that eruption triggered the last ice age. The scenery is really gorgeous, unfortunately we were pretty unlucky with the weather as it was cloudy and rainy for the 3 days that we were there. Nonetheless it was a nice place to relax and on our 3rd day we rented out a motorbike and had a drive around the island to check out some of the traditonal Toba Batak culture. First we stopped in a little Batak village called Ambarita where one of the locals showed us some 200 year old stone chairs in amongst the traditional big houses. We found out that the Toba Bataks were a fairly brutal lot before they all converted to Christianity. The stone chairs were apparently where the chief of the village used to judge serious criminals and decide whether they should be executed or not. We were then taken to see the actual execution spot where the condemned would be bound and blindfolded. He would then be cut to see whether he had black magic in him, after that he would be beaten and crushed with a stick, and then decapitated! The body and heart would then be cut up and divided amongst the whole watching village, every villager then had to eat the body raw! On top of that, if they refused, they were immediately executed! Not really a place for vegetarians. After that we headed off to see a small Batak museum and perfectly preserved village, we then headed back and got soaked in the pouring rain on our bike!

This afternoon we arrived in Yogyakarta on the island of Java after practically 2 days straight of travelling, including; a 5 hour super-cramped public bus journey from a Toba to Medan, a flight delayed by 3 hours from Medan to Jakarta, and then a 20 hour minibus journey from Jakarta to here. We are therefore... knackered!

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Photos

Traditional Karo Batak house
Houses like these were traditionally home to 8-10 families. Inside there are no partitions so family life is carried out in full view of the neighbours!

Karo Batak Tomb
The Karo Batak people have mantained many of their own traditions, including the reburial ceremony during which the bones of deceased relatives are removed from their graves every few years and washed with a mixture of water and orange juice.

Traditional Toba Batak House
Stone courts outside the village chief's house at Ambarita, Lake Toba

Traditional Toba Batak House
These differ from the Karo Batak houses in that the roofs are shaped to represent buffalo horns

Comments

[Chi]

Lake Toba
Ohh... Lake Toba... looks good, wanna go there someday! :-)