After our very remote first stay in Sumatra, it was time to move to the nearest town of Bukit Lawang. Our travel option was a rather old open back jeep where we sat on wooden benches holding on where possible, the girls thought this was marvellous bumping along the road down to the town, through the palm oil plantations, whilst waving to the locals streaming past us on their motorbikes. On arrival in the town our bags were strapped onto the back of one said motorbike and disappeared ahead of us, hopefully to our guest house. We followed on foot for about 15 minutes taking in our new surroundings. Leaving the main road behind we passed along a narrow winding path which appears to be the high street, shops selling local clothes, cold drinks (hooray fridges!) and lots of cafes and guest houses. Through gaps between the buildings, we could see and hear the rushing river, which looked most welcoming as we continued to sweat along our walk.

It really was unlike anywhere else we’ve been, the path was also shared with lots of motorbikes, at first we stood to one side then as we became more attuned to the approaching rumble of the engines just carried on walking as they squeezed past on the narrow path. We arrived at our guest house to be greeted with chilled drinks, first ones in 4 days so much appreciated. Unfortunately the room at the guest house wasn’t such a welcome reprieve and after a bit of booking.com search (even here most places are on it!), decided to move to another guest house. This proved to have a much larger and cooler room, and had amazing views… with amazing views however come amazing steps… 131 in total (and most of them double height so we guessed the equivalent of an 8 storey climb). Certainly helped us work off the vast amount of rice and noodles we’re consuming. The town is a very chilled place with lots of Indonesian and Western tourists (mainly European listening to accents), and also lots of families. However Saturday night turned out to be less than chilled… the open air live band started at 9.30pm with the disco following until 3am… I kid you not I don’t think anyone in the entire town got much sleep. Turns out this is a weekly occurrence for the whole town.

Slightly bleary eyed the next morning, we headed down for breakfast before we started our trek – porridge with banana proving a nice change for me, pancakes for the girls. And then we were off on our adventure – trekking into the jungle to look for orangutans! Sumatra is one of only two places in the world where you can find orangutans, the other being Borneo which Stu and I had visited over 10 years ago to see orangutans in reserves, however this time they were wild! Well… some are wild and some deemed semi-wild. Between the 1970s and 2002 there was a rehabilitation centre in Bukit Lawang which aimed to return orangutans to the wild. During this time there were feeding stations where tourists could come to visit, this was eventually closed due to there being too many tourists. Those orangutans who had been rehomed in the jungle were accustomed to the feeding stations and will never really be truly wild, however each offspring becomes increasingly wild so there is now this mix of the animals.

It was the semi-wild animals which we saw first. Before we even got into the National Park, we were so lucky to see our first three orangutans in a tree including a huge male. It was so surprising to see them so close, we had expected them to be high up in the trees, a little orange blob but no they were so close. There is a reason there is a 10m rule for distance with the animals, you could easily get closer had you wanted. We were saddened that not all tourists respected this, at times it felt like the animals were still in a centre surrounded by tourists – especially on Sunday which we had been forewarned would be busy.  Anyhow, this first sighting brought me to tears, it was really magical. As we progressed into the National Park we were lucky to see a huge male and a female with a baby. They are so majestic, huge long arms, very fluffy orange fur and such expressive faces. You could easily understand that orangutans share 97% of human DNA.

As well as the orangutans we saw lots of monkeys including pig tail, Thomas Leaf and Long Tailed Macaques. Our trek ended at the river where we all plunged in for a quick swim before boarding our transport for home – a series of rubber tyres lashed together to form a small snaking raft. It was down through the rapids and back to our hotel. Everyone loved this great way to end our adventure! We headed for lunch overlooking the river, which was heaving with people! Sunday is the only day of rest here (people work and schools are open Mon – Sat), and it looked like the whole town was spending the day in the river. It was so lovely to see people relaxing as large family groups, swimming and tubing, some doing the kids’ Sunday hair wash (apparently a tradition the world over). We were entertained to see lots of Indonesian women wanting to have their photo taken with a Western mum – they were dressed in the beautiful headscarves and long clothes, she in t-shirt and swimmers. It really shows that we’re all interested in people who may not be familiar to us. Messing around in a river is certainly a great leveller.

The next day we headed back to the National Park and once again were rewarded for sweating our way through the jungle (long trousers tucked into socks to prevent any leaches – it was a good look!), with lots of orangutan sightings. A large male asleep – looked so comfy on his bed of branches, another large male who strolled off along the path in front of us, so gentle and majestic, and two juveniles playing in the trees above our heads. A super fruit break – water melon, bananas, passion fruit, dragon fruit, ranboutan (hairy lychees) – laid out on large leaves on the jungle floor proved a welcome reprieve. Then it was on through the jungle and back down to the river for our final tubing session. These two mornings have been so special.

The girls had been desperate to swim in the river so late afternoon we headed to the end of the town for a dip. There’s a reason the tubing works well here, the huge flow of the river! We identified a short route which we repeated – throw yourself into the river, swim 10m or so with the current, stand up and grab the nearest large stone to stop yourself drifting off downstream, and repeat! A lovely way to cool off – the monkeys thought so too scampering around on the opposite bank but none of them being brave enough to use the rope over the river – they would get half way and then turn round and go back to the rest of the troop. Very amusing to watch their valiant attempts!

Food has been interesting here, there are lots of cafes and little shops in the town selling snacks but no way of really ‘picking up’ some food, or the prospect of making your own lunch, or eating anything cold. So we’ve eaten out in restaurants with hot noodles or rice for every meal. This is fine, but as we learnt the hard way each cafe only has one (possibly two) hobs on which to cook. This can mean a rather long wait for food… we were clued up on this by our last night settling down in a restaurant at 6pm ordering beers and food and enjoying a long game of Yahtzee (new favourite game since Costa Rica!) before food arrived about an hour later.  The good news is that everything is cooked fresh to order. Dinner consumed, Yahtzee won (Lottie), it was time to tackle the guest house steps for the last time…. hence to say we all slept well!

Sumatra has been a real eye opener for us, the climate, the food, the homes. It will be interesting to see how this changes as we go through Lombok and then onto Bali, expecting to see a real spectrum of human life and experience.