The Journeys ... The Current Trip

We are currently in a small town called Berastagi in the Karo Highlands of North Sumatra. And we haven't been cycling much at all.

We have plenty of excuses for not riding. First we were visited by a friend of Erika!'s, Charlie and we took her to Samosir Island (Lake Toba, Sumatra) so she could wind down from London stress. The Lake Toba region is the perfect place to do nothing at all and that's just what we did.
Then, when Charlie left and we were supposed to get back on the bike, the whole legal situation in New York worsened again. It's really rather a nasty business, as one doesn't quite expect to have to resort to legal action against a family member. It's messy. So we stayed in Tuktuk a week longer than we intended.

From Lake Toba, we back tracked to Berastagi in the Karo Highlands. This high plateau is the breadbasket for Northern Sumatra due its fertile volcanic soil and the moderate, wet climate. From our veranda, we can see several conical volcanoes. I climbed up one of them - the 2,300 meters tall Mount Sibayak. Active volcanoes are always interesting to climb, if one can deal with the stench of sulphur. Unfortunately, the rainy season is now in control of Sumatra and the famous views were obscured by clouds and fog. But it was a nice little hike, anyhow.

Yes, the wet season has us. It rains every day, usually in the afternoon and the early evening. As long as the weather sticks to this pattern, it doesn't affect our riding too much, as we try to get in as much riding as possible during the morning. The ride from Lake Toba to Berastagi was rather epic. The main road makes a big detour and is both uninspiring and busy with speeding bemos (mini-van buses). We chose to ride the little-used road along the lake.
Lake Toba is a gigantic crater lake (the size of Singapore) and the shores are all steep mountain-sides towering 200 - 600 meters above the lake itself. We were hoping that once we had climbed out of the lake, we would follow along the ridge of these mountains, which would make for a fairly pleasant ride with good views. We did get the good views alright (see the picture below) - but the following along the ridge part didn't quite turn out that way. The road constantly climbed and dropped along the mountain sides, running through small villages and coffee plantations. At the end of the day we had accumulated over 1,300 meters in altitude. We were both hurting badly, after almost three weeks of not riding, our bodies objected strongly. Near sunset, we could not find a place to stay, so we resorted to putting our bicycles on a bus and headed to the next large town in the direction of Berastagi. You can't always beat the terrain.

Tomorrow, we will head further north towards Banda Aceh. We will take the inland road going through the mountains of Gunung Leuser National Park. We are asking for it, aren't we? Ah well, no pain, no gain. Unfortunately, we are starting to run out of time. Our Indonesian visa is running out on the 24th November. Once in Banda Aceh, we'll have to decide on how we want to leave Sumatra. There are two boats connecting Northern Sumatra with Malaysia - one in Medan and one in Dumai.
Yes, our Indonesian adventure is slowly coming to an end - and neither of us is really excited about the mainland just yet. Even Sumatra already has a clear 'backpacker trail' and especially Thailand will be much worse. We had several people who wanted to visit us in Thailand and all but my parents and little sister have bailed, frankly somewhat messing with our itinerary. Now we have to spend three months in Thailand, which wasn't in the plans. I'm sure we'll find something to do. First, we'll visit my friend Chris on Koh Samui. Then we'll probably head to Bangkok for some New Years Eve celebrations, some Thai Boxing, maybe visit with Sawang, whom we met in Makassar and Erika! hasn't yet seen a ping pong show yet.

But for now, we are still in Indonesia and hope to enjoy the rest of our time in this wonderful country. As always, I have uploaded pictures since my last travel log, you can find them in the Last 50 Photos Gallery I hope, this finds you all well and happy. Till next time.

Adrian