 About North Sumatera
The City: Medan Toba Lake and Samosir Island
 
Nias Island | 
Warrior | 
Stone Jumping | 
Surfing Paradise | 
Singer | 
Gibbon | | | Western Island: Nias A long string of islands peaks of an undersea mountain ridge running parallel to the coast protects Sumatra's west flank from the ferocity of the Indian Ocean. The turbulent waters and difficult approaches have long isolated these islands from mainland society. Only recently have the Neolithic inhabitants of these islands seen visitors on a regular basis as they emerge, slowly, into the modern era.
Enormous breakers pummel the island of Nias, attracting the best surfers in the world to Lagundri Beach. The unforgiving power attacking the shore seems to have bred the same qualities in the people, whose militaristic culture has fascinated anthropologists for decades. The fortified villages attest to the often-brutal nature of pre-modern Nias, where chiefs would capture neighbouring villagers to sell to Acehnese slave traders, and where human sacrifice and head hunting was practiced into the 20th century.
Much of the heroic culture of Nias survives in hypnotic dancing representing preparation for battle. The sport of stone jumping, where youths, sword in hand, leap two-metres obelisks, was originally a preparation for clearing village walls in nighttime raids. Now though many traditional crafts seem to have died out, including stone carving, the efforts of past arttists elaborate thrones in the shape of hornbills or drums, ornamental tables or memorial obelisks will last an eternity. The more southerly Islands in the chain, more difficult to reach and explore, offer equal or greater rewards to those interested in pre-modern cultures.
The four Mentawai Islands, accessible only by boat from Padang, are populated by several distinct hunter/gatherer tribes only now coming into contact with the modern world. The Sakkudai of Sibemt, the largest island, maintain a complex belief system based on living in total harmony with nature. Local guides can organize visits to Sakkudai longhouse by riverboat into the interior. The lone island Enggano -Portuguese 'disappointment' lies off the coast of Bengkulu. Remote and mysterious even now mainlanders once believed it was populated only by women, who gave birth to children fathered by the wind.
The remote island of Siberut, isolated from the mainland for millennia, is home to some of Sumatra's rarest mammals. The Siberut gibbon, easily the most charming and attractive of the great apes, has found refuge on the island while it's cousins on the mainland are being pressured by land clearing and poaching. Though humans have also inhabited tiny Siberut for most of this time, the local tribes' belief in total harmony with nature safeguards the precarious ecological balance an the refuge of the gibbon. |
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