I was in Medan, just south of Aceh state, on the North Indonesian island of Sumatra. My host was a Batak Christian, who make up a large percentage of the city. The most impressive building that I saw, however, was the Great Mosque of Medan. Surrounded by cafes and restaurants, the building itself was set slightly back behind welcoming walls that guided visitors towards the entrance gate where they dressed you in the appropriate garb. I wrapped a colourful piece of material around myself, half towel-half scarf, and made my way up the steps, crossed the veranda and entered a side arcade through some wooden doors. Complete silence, the kind that’s put there by the architect’s design, consumed the passage. Side doors led into the main prayer hall, as always the strong desire to lie on the floor struck me as soon as I stepped foot inside the calming octagon, the carpet calling to me as it had to the other bodies strewn about the ground. One fellow with his back flat on the floor, knees up forming a triangle, was rolling a mishaba (similar to a rosary) through his fingers. Another man was sat in the doorway that led out to the other side, the trees that lined the walls would have been visible were it not for the golden light of the speedy sunset streaming in under the arch. The man’s body cut a silhouette against the light, what I saw with my eyes would have made a wonderful photo, but it’s so often these situations where it’s better to keep it for yourself, and save it in memory alone. Besides I am as a capable of capturing the moment in a photo as I am at drawing a perfect circle.
Leaving the Mosque I met my host waiting outside. The comfortable carriage Tuk-Tuks of Java Island were long gone, the rattling cage sidecar clunkily balanced on the back of a bike was the transport of choice for Sumatra. I’d arranged for a minivan to collect me the following morning before dawn and drive me to Parapat town, further south and deeper inland. My final destination was Lake Toba and the island within it, Samosir. I had seen some intriguing photos of the area, the greens looked lighter compared to the intense dark of the continental Southeast Asian jungles. The water had a weightlessness to it that suggested elevation, the kind of inner truth that a talented photographer can draw from their subject. As usual I did some passing research on the lake and the island, glancing at interesting facts like
“(The) largest volcanic lake in the world…. massive super volcanic eruption… decade long global winter…. genetic bottleneck”
Fascinating stuff to be sure, but all I was really interested in was the topography of the area, and if you could see any marked difference on the ground. I’m not a botanist or a biologist, but travelling alone allows you time to pause and stare at something simple so that you might obtain greater understanding. The kind of understanding lost when looking through a lens pointed by disembodied hands, absent of unified thought. 21st Century Moderns extoll the virtuous simplicity of the global mapping service that allows us all to stare through metal eyes at mountains we might never climb and oceans whose waters we might never swim in. Although I imagine it helps the homesick to watch some chap on the other side of the world buy milk from a corner shop.
Dawn broke with orange anger, fiery heat unbecoming of such early hours wrapped around me the moment I stepped out of the well fanned spacious rooms of my host’s house. The tight streets looked all the tighter with the silvery metal box scraping its way between the low cinder block walls that ensquared the houses. Wrinkly old men sat in rattan chairs eyed the minivan, that most touristy of vehicles, with unfazed faces. I threw my backpack inside and clamoured into the empty seat farthest back. The driver had black teeth, my vaguely-informed conclusion was that chewing betel nut was to blame. The minivan swerved between the cars and bikes on the road, overtaking everything and everyone like he was on a mission to find someone he could tailgate at top speed. We didn't find him, which might explain the slightly forlorn look on the drivers otherwise chuckling round and brown face as we pulled up to the lakeside town. The road from the city of Medan to Lake Toba was dark and full of dark people in the streets, something similar to Myanmar in the way they walked at a steady pace, I saw very few public buses, and traffic was clear on every country road. The people hanging out in roads, all this stuff about the place, surprisingly ambitious construction and copious amounts of things on top of things. This was my first time in Indonesia, but it reminded me more of Africa than anything else.
We arrived at the little lakeside market town of Parapet with the son hanging determinedly in the sky. This town had a market that was very similar to the Arabic bazaars in Zanzibar, blue tarpaulin stretched over shops selling bird cages and spiky fruit. The bazaar engulfed the gravely square surrounding the jetty where two ferries waited. Surrounding the bazaar was two lines of terraced housing that could have once been a royal estate or a nobleman's villa but was now split, as indicated by the awnings that stretched into the road, several different shops offering either taxi services back to the provincial capital or a currency exchange service. Everywhere there was peeling plaster and fuzzy bearded men wearing little box shaped skull caps.
There was a hive of activity along the pier, various ferries transporting cars and bikes to the Samosir Island. I paid 10,000 rupiah for a ticket and stepped onto a boat with scooters parked below and a few tourists on the top bunk. As soon as I got on the ferry it felt like I'd been transported halfway round the world back to Europe. The smell of spices and honks of horns back in the town had blinded me from the freshness of the air and the cool breeze coming in off the lake, the water was a thin, light blue, not like the lush, turquoise tropical oceans. The ferry puttered away and suddenly the heavy air dissipated, like a heavy jacket being lifted off my shoulders, and a cool breeze glided in off the water, as the expanse of the lake opened up it began to look like Lake Como. A mother and her adult son struck up a conversation with me, she was German and he was half Indonesian, I imagine she felt quite at home in the fresh surroundings. He was Nikolai and I’ve forgotten her name, chiefly because she wasn’t on social media. They lived in the countryside not far from the lake and apparently came to the island quite regularly. He was the sort of fellow who just starts talking to you if you sit down. We pattered genially about some of the Thai islands that we’d both been too, I mentioned my grandmother was German and told my anecdotes about the chocolate factory in Cologne and the vending machine that had a slot for recycling bottles and would give you 50 pfennigs for every bottle you put in it. The pfennig line seemed to go down better with the mother than Nikolai.
A wooden, chalet looking hotel drew closer out of the tight air, like a brown knife cutting through a crisp sheet of A4. There appeared to be no official mooring point. The polished brown of the wooden chalet started popping up all around the gentle slope up from the shoreline and it became clear that this was a hotel and the mooring point was its private parking space. Typically the foreign travelers I most often meet are the French, but curiously enough yet more Germans, inexplicably hiding in this far corner of the world, came down to greet their countrymen. I threw out a few passing phrases that I could remember on the spot then waved my hand in a dismissive motion when their faces lit up, hoping this would make it clear that under no circumstances would I be able to engage in conversation in German. Apparently they all knew each other, which I suppose made sense, and they were planning to loaf about the island for a few days. I didn’t have time to waste, using the hotel lobby as a grand entrance to the island I said goodbye to the elders and Nikolai led me through to the back where I procured a motorcycle for the day. I drank a bottle of water whilst waiting for the helmet, the staff down the back here were Batak Indonesian, Nikolai seemed to get along well with them. The girls wore their hair loose and seemed cheerier than in the city, but then this island was a kind of paradise.
I took off on the bike and headed straight down a dirt path that quickly turned into a smoothed tarmac road. Within moments I came across two churches either side of an empty country road, continuing round a corner I came across a little church on top of a hill. Two rows of dry stone wall were built into the hillside below it, the church itself was red brick, with a smooth flat face and a sharply slanted roof. The slope of the hill obscured the church from view so it appeared suddenly upon completion of the turn, with the road bending around to the right and leading away again, the church watching from its perch at the apex of the turn. Further down the road I slowed and saw a huge church that looked like it could accommodate a congregation of a few hundred, it stood wide with three black spires reaching for the clouds. A peeling paint fence marked out the grounds which was mostly just grass growing in tussocks amid plains of brown. A plastic sign advertising something ballooned out from its backboard, two pins holding one side in place. The road teamed up with the coast and they both set a straight course, surrounded by sparse green fields and beneath a translucent blue sky. The rolling hills in the middle distance were dotted with bushes the colour of ripe avocados, their presence wouldn’t have looked out of place in an illustrated John Betjeman poem, with the bushes painted white like sheep. I rode further and further, passing shrines and statues, church after church hidden behind overgrowth or sitting on well-trimmed lawns. One especially large church had a large, curved wooden roof protruding out from the front in the Batak style. Wooden beams and columns below it flanked by two white-washed walls and a white cross atop a red clay coloured spire. There were other examples of the two styles being fused, the traditional animistic culture not forgotten amidst the apparent 100 year plan to coat the island in Christian architecture. The closer to the main town I drew I saw more colourful shrines, the wide yawning mouth of the Batak Toba style roof becoming more and more abundant.
Surely the wide body of water was not the only reason the mainland looked like a stuffy, bustling Arab bazaar whilst the island looked like as though a Cotswold village had suddenly emerged from the waters off the coast of Lake Garda. Who came first to Sumatra, Islam or Christianity? And had Batak culture merged with both equally, in the same way St. Nick and the pagan tree are an essential part of Christmas? No doubt the internet searching machine would find all the answers to my questions, but as ever I enjoyed simply thinking about it and letting my mind wander. Besides, the bar I’d stopped at didn’t have WiFi. It did have an expansive view of the lake though, and plenty of ice cold San Miguel.