Sumatra, Unwrapped
I was pretty excited to flee Bali.
Don’t get me wrong—I had some great experiences there. Snorkeling Menjangan Island; joining the locals in a parade for Kunigan; practicing yoga in the rice fields; enjoying cheap Balinese massages. But at the end of the day, I think it just wasn’t for me. I was glad to move onto my final destination in Indonesia: Sumatra!
My day began at 4 am with a flight to Yogyakarta in Java, then another flight to Medan in Sumatra, where I hired a driver to take me to my destination of Bukit Lawang. Bukit Lawang is only about 80 miles from Medan, but it took four hours. The roads are awful here! Potholes galore. And the drive takes you past palm oil plantations, which is pretty depressing (research palm oil and don’t consume it unless it’s sustainably sourced!)
It was a long day, but upon arriving at my guesthouse, I started to feel better. I checked in to my rustic bungalow with a cozy hammock and a view of the rainforest, booked my treks, and devoured some Indonesian veggie curry. Upon settling in to my hammock, I was treated to a magnificent light show in the form of a jungle thunderstorm. The sky lit up with white-hot lightning and psychedelic purple streaks.
Bukit Lawang is a sleepy little jungle town. Maybe too sleepy. It’s definitely set up for tourism but there aren’t many tourists here. If it weren’t for Trey, a young Californian I met at my guesthouse, I’d be the only person staying here. As much as I like getting back to nature, as a solo female traveler in the jungle, it can be a little creepy. Like, for example, when you’re awoken by a monkey opening your window in the morning. So I’m thankful to the universe for sending me Trey!
Sumatra wasn’t in my original plan, but I happened across a post on Bukit Lawang on Instagram mentioning that it was a good place to view critically endangered Sumatran orangutans in the wild. In fact, you can only see orangutans in the wild in two places in the world: Sumatra and Borneo. I immediately booked a ticket.
Orangutans have always been one of my favorite animals. They’re beautiful. They’re smart. They’re solitary. And their habitat is being decimated by humans. I simply couldn’t be this close to seeing one in the wild and not go.
Trey and I did two separate treks: one to Bukit Kencur, an untouched rainforest about 30 minutes away by motorbike. The pro of Bukit Kencur is that it is much less touristed than Bukit Lawang—we saw no other humans in the forest that day. The con is that the wildlife there is totally wild and unused to humans, so it is hard to see monkeys. We saw some Thomas Leaf monkeys but no orangutans. Still, it was an immersive day in the rainforest.
On the second day we headed to Bukit Lawang and were treated to an exceptional day of wildlife sightings. Thomas Leaf monkeys, native to Sumatra and sporting funky mohawks. One silvered leaf monkey and one pigtailed macaque, both rather shy. And four orangutans: two moms and their babies. Wow. Although the trek wasn’t easy, nearly vertical at times and full of mud (thanks to those thunderstorms…), it was beyond worth it to have the experience of locking eyes with a Thomas Leaf monkey and to watch a baby orangutan swaying from branch to branch above my head.
We finished the trek with a “jungle taxi” of tubing back to town on the river. As we bounced among the river rocks, I contemplated the end of my time in Indonesia. It’s a confusing and complex country, made up of thousands of islands and hundreds of languages. In three weeks here, I’ve only touched the surface. As my first third-world country experience, it’s taken some getting used to, but overall I’ve loved the natural wonders and the kind people. Sumatra in particular, though, made me uneasy. First, as a solo female traveler in the jungle, sleeping alone in a bungalow in a threatening thunderstorm definitely made me nervous, even though I didn’t meet anyone who pinged as dangerous on my radar. Second, it’s so hard to witness the beauty of seeing live orangutans and monkeys in the jungle and to also see the devastation that palm oil plantations are wreaking on the environment. Even the little things like stray cats running un-spayed and un-neutered through the streets make me feel desperate: How can I help? It’s such a stunning country, but how long will it stay that way? I’m trying hard to make this trip a balance of tourism and contribution, but there is only so much I can do when just passing through.
