Wonderful Sumatra: Why you should always take the road less travelled

April 13, 2015

The morning arrived and I continued on the main road for another twenty kilometres or so during which time I was run off the road a pleasing total of just one time. Then I took a left turn towards a place named Pujud which was, in an unusually advanced piece of road-technology, marked by a signpost. Finding a good map of Sumatra had proven somewhat difficult and, although I had one provided by S.K. it was somewhat vague and had already often been outright wrong about exactly where it thought the roads were, and so I was also using photos that I’d taken of another map as well as google maps. Unfortunately these three sources struggled to quite reach a consensus as to which roads existed or where they went, but I planned to take a best guess and muddle along on the smaller roads as well as I could in order to avoid the dangerous main route all the same.

She's too young to make the two finger peace sign in photos, but she will learn

My decision to take the smaller road received immediate vindication as it was much more pleasant and safe cycling, and the few trucks and motorcycles that were using it were forced to slow down by the potholes that I myself could easily weave in and out of. I was cycling once again through lots of palm oil plantations and villages of run down shacks where children ran barefoot in the dirt. But after a while I passed a property which didn’t quite fit with the surroundings, where a gallery of large pieces of art hung from bamboo walls. I was invited to stop and explore it by a thin, wiry man with long hair and body tattoos that spilled out from under his shirt; tattoos that climbed his neck and crept out of his sleeves and onto his hands.

The lean tattooed man introduced himself as Mr Bru and he sat me down in a little bamboo hut/room where he asked me if I wanted a drink and then left me all alone while he disappeared on his motorcycle, which was much larger and more expensive than everyone else’s. Back he came a few minutes later with two cans of Red Bull, and then he sat with me and we talked. He knew some English, but he spoke so rapidly and mixed it up with Indonesian and repeated words in a fashion that made it very hard to make head nor tail of what he was saying. I managed to establish that Mr Bru was Hindu, although not what he was thinking of when he set up an art gallery in the midst of a poor rural village. I watched as he played his guitar for a while before he sat back contented and smoked expensive cigarettes whilst showing me photographs. I got out my map and asked him if I was still on the right road to Pujud but he simply could not understand what the hell I wanted to do in Pujud or what in the world I was doing out here where no foreigners usually tread.

Mr Bru next showed me some of his art work and introduced me to his wife and daughter (I think). His wife was making something with flowers but when I tried to find out what it was Mr Bru started saying something about her being able to predict the future. Then he showed me some stones and said that one of them was worth a million rupiah. At this point I began to wonder about Mr Bru.

Me with Mr Bru, his wife, his daughter, and some man. There is always some man

He next showed me a photograph of a monument to the first president of Indonesia, and explained that this great man was his own grandfather. As if this extension of his family tree wasn’t already far-fetched enough he then pointed to a painting that he had done of a woman riding a horse through some waves, the ‘King of the sea’ as he described her. “Sister” he said, pointing at the painting and then back at the photo of the monument, “President’s sister.” It was at about this point that I decided Mr Bru was, for want of a better phrase, outright loopy, and thought it might be a good idea for me to leave.

Note the painting behind - It is Mr Bru's great aunt, the King of the Sea

On I went on a road which became increasingly pot-holed and sandy and bad, and yet which remained an absolute delight to cycle on. There were sometimes forks and turnings in the road but I managed to keep on track by asking the delightful locals for directions and at some point I passed Pujud without noticing and just kept on going towards the next town as the road got worse. It was the kind of road where ducks could be found swimming in the potholes and where car tyres had been cut up and rolled flat to create makeshift speed bumps. The absolute most unnecessary speed bumps in the world they were too, given the state of the road.

I stopped for a drink here, tried and failed to establish what it was, but I got a bit of pink, a bit of green, a bit of brown and a bit of white. In a plastic bag, of course. It didn't taste bad

Still quite a bit of traffic in places but it was going super slow because of the road conditions

And the occasional patch of paved road. I have no idea what this fish roundabout was all about though

But it was a real pleasure, an absolute joy, to be cycling out here in the wilds of Indonesia, where so few tourists ever come. Some of the adults cried out happy greetings to me but the children mostly just stopped and stared, slack-jawed at this apparition before them. Perhaps I was the first white man that many of them had ever seen. This was an adventure, this was fun. And the people were great. At one point I stopped to buy a 25p mango smoothie from a roadside stall, and met a lovely man named Rico and his two daughters, and another man paid for my drink and walked off before I knew what was happening. This was the real Sumatra, the real people of Sumatra, and this was great.

Try finding a fruit smoothie for 25p back home. Delicious!

Rico and his daughters. Another lovely man

I was so buoyed by the great day of cycling that I decided that I wasn’t going to hide away in a plantation this night, but instead try and keep the adventure going. So in the early evening I stopped next to a skullcap-wearing man and asked him if he wouldn’t mind if I put my tent up next to his property. He agreed, and in fact soon upgraded his offer to the garage. Naturally my arrival had caused quite a stir and within minutes I was surrounded by people, most of them children. And most of these children, interestingly and indeed terrifyingly enough, arrived riding their own motorcycles.

This kid with the yellow shorts was kind of annoying

I like this photo because it is the only one that yellow shorts kid didn't manage to get in the middle of with his silly arms

As the smiling and laughing crowd around me grew to include the entire neighbourhood a woman was found who could speak a bit of English. The funny thing about this woman was that she responded to whatever I said to her, no matter what it was, with a startled look of abject horror. Still she managed to translate a few things, and told me that there was a restaurant just a hundred metres away where I could get dinner. I thought that the excited huddle of people would all follow me to it as I walked off into the dark, but strangely no one did.

I sat and ate alone in the restaurant and enjoyed the sudden peace and quiet that came with it, thinking about the magnificent craziness of the day. I also felt suddenly and unexpectedly a bit sad. The surroundings of both the restaurant and the country itself was all quite reminiscent of Laos and as I sat eating my rice and egg I thought about how much nicer it would be if Dea was sitting opposite me. We could share a laugh about all of the attention, talk of how nice it was here, how great the people were. I wondered when or if I would ever share such moments with her again. I hoped desperately that I would. But for now I was alone.

I wasn’t alone when I wandered back to the house though, with almost everyone still there waiting for my return. Looking for a way to entertain them all I got out my camera and took more photos, and then I opened them on my laptop so that everyone could see. The children fought to get to the front of the shot and squealed when they saw their faces on the screen. Somehow I had the feeling that my arrival this night was one of the most exciting things that had happened here for a while. There were smiles and laughter everywhere and a genuine sense of joy seemed to reverberate through the air. It felt absolutely wonderful.

Alright, just one more, I'm tired now lovely people

Today's ride: 94 km (58 miles)
Total: 40,118 km (24,913 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	4
Comment on this entry	Comment	0