Perched prettily on the banks of the Bohorok River, Bukit Lawang is the poster child for village life. With imposing Gunung Leuser as a backdrop, a paved laneway its only thoroughfare, loquacious locals and wildlife drop-ins on the regular, it’s where Zen goes to holiday!
Bukit (hill) Lawang (gate) is one of the gateway villages to Gunung Leuser National Park, a 7,927 km² UNESCO World Heritage Site, home to approximately 5,000 of the 7,000 remaining Sumatran orangutans in the wild. It’s also the habitat for some other pretty awesome wildlife – hornbills, Thomas Leaf monkeys, macaques, civets, flying lemurs, gibbons, slow lorises, clouded leopards and sun bears – and it’s the only stretch of jungle in the world where elephants, tigers, rhinos and orangutans hang in the same space.
After exiting Medan (a useful gateway to all things interesting in North Sumatra, but essentially just a big, ugly, messy Southeast Asian capital city), we headed northwest for eighty-six km, travelling on roads lined with rubber and palm oil plantations, and pitted with gargantuan potholes that you could disappear into for a week! The driver, one of a couple of road ninjas we had on our Sumatran sojourn, skilful in the game of “chicken”, had me swallowing my cuss words, eyes closed and just trusting the process.
As the city smog subsided, the pale blue silhouette of Bukit Barisan mountain range called us like a siren. Stretching 1,700 km along the western edge of the island and regarded as the backbone of Sumatra, it’s a geological marvel, formed through complex tectonic processes over millions of years, and is home to 35 active volcanoes. With towering peaks and lush valleys, the Barisan Mountains are not only ready for their close-up, they promise adventures of dense jungle hikes, exploration of tiny villages and the thrill of climbing active volcanoes.
We pulled up outside a small nondescript shop, in an equally unmemorable street. “You’re here!” Like, so far from the image of Bukit Lawang that I had in my head. Then a couple of locals grabbed our bags, yeeted them onto the front of their motorbikes, and invited us to jump on the back. LOL. In another lifetime, I would have…. poo to helmets and woo hoo to adventure! The driver Rama (aka our jungle and river guide) guaranteed his driving credentials, but our standard Aussie travel insurance didn’t include yahooing on the back of motorbikes, so we kindly declined and walked the 15 minutes to our accommodation at Sam’s Bungalows. And what a walk that was!
A quaint paved pathway (only accessible by foot or motorbike), bordered by jungle and the Bohorok River, which was spanned by a bunch of architecturally interesting (read: rickety) rope and bamboo bridges. Passing artisans at work, kids on rubber tyres rafting down undulating rapids, locals laundering in the river, guesthouses with welcoming restaurants, new lodgings under construction, everyone with a friendly hello as we went by.
There were cheeky macaques strategically placed along the electrical wiring above the pathway, on roofs and guesthouse balconies. Opportunistic marauders, plundering bins with nimble fingers, sneaking stealthily into backyards, raiding rubbish and then exiting stage left, a littered landscape in their wake.
Sam’s Bungalows are the second to last accommodation at the end of the paved lane. Huge rooms with super comfortable beds, air-con and awesome verandas with majestic views over the gently cascading Bohorok River, and you are virtually slapped in the face by the imposing vertical green of massive Gunung Leuser.
Daily, late afternoon thunder heralded the arrival of torrential downpours, sometimes hail, to cool down the heaving tropical forest, ready to start a new day, all clean and refreshed. Blissfully watching from the restaurant deck at Sam’s Bungalows, Bintang in hand, delicious food, Sam and his staff, a genetically blessed workforce. In fact, I think the whole of Bukit Lawang has been sprinkled with fairy dust! You MUST bucket list this!
