2018 S.E. Asia: Bukit Lawang, Sumatra, Indonesia

Visit Bukit Lawang. Really - it is fantastic. Not so much the sometimes bumpy, busy 4hr drive from Medan airport, but very much the valley community, and absolutely the jungle hike.

Our brief stop in K.L. before Bukit Lawang was to re-group and re-thinking our packing for our next three Indonesian adventures: Bukit Lawang, Sumatra; Yogyakarta, Java; and Ujung Kulon, Java. We visited a K.L. sporting goods shop for wet booties (which turned out to be dry bags, another day pack, and wet booties), and we also visited "Little India" in K.L.'s Brickfields district to catch the tail end of Deepavali, festival of light and positiveness and ousting of negativity. There was just enough activity to get a sense of the colour and liveliness of this celebration. We had been hearing nightly fireworks and firecrackers for about a week, and wanted to experience a bit of the activities at street level.

At the K.L. airport in the morning, we saw scattered Deepavali coloured rice designs poetically indicating the 2018 Festival of Lights had ended.

Our Bukit Lawang day was exceptional, starting with an early morning sighting of White-crowned Hornbill in the wall of jungle across the river from our Indra Valley Inn room balcony. What a treat! We had not expected Hornbill. One arrived, then a second, and then two more, one a female. Our hike ("trek"), started at 8:30am and ended about 3:30pm, with a thrilling 1/2hr tube ride through de ep rapids that three times swamped the tubes, and put tour guide Janet overboard. After drying out, a coffee break and a walk out of the Valley community to time our walk out at 6:15am the next morning, we went for a friendly beer to exchange photos and Blog addresses with our congenial tour-mates Andrea and Jans from Berlin.

Our Bukit Lawang trip was to hopefully see Orangutan and we did, including a female with a youngster. Babies stay with their mom until about age three and so moms birth on about five-year cycles, starting as early as age five. The female we saw was about 15, so the youngster could be her third baby. Somewhat more exciting for us was another hornbill sighting - this time two Rhinoceros Hornbill! What a thrill to watch these gigantic, colourful, sculptural birds lumber about the canopy as they pluck at the mangosteen. The tour leader Loho was equally impressed, as Rhinoceros Hornbill are rarely seen. Loho was pleased that we also saw other primates (Thomas's Langur) and a jungle peacock (Great Argus) - actually a pheasant. A great day for jungle fauna!

Trekking in the jungle on rustic, muddy paths, some extremely steep, takes fortitude and a sense of humour. Our guide had both, and we eventually got there too. After Yolanda's leech incident - yuk - a couple of backwards falls into the jungle, crumbling trails and slipping into a stream (Jans), we followed the technique of the Orangutan and used vines to keep on path. It was an exhilarating day!

Indra Valley Inn and others in the Valley make this adventure complete. The rooms are surprisingly modern in a rustic way, and the food is delicious. The host of our Inn, Obiwan, made us feel at home and welcome. We would love to return to stay longer some time.

We didn't get a good sense of Medan, as we drove through the edge from and back to the airport, but we did enjoy the colourful house exteriors we passeed. We were en route as children were being delivered to school on motorbikes and packed mini-buses. Workers were in the palm orchards and on construction projects. Food stalls abounded, as we have seen all over S.E. Asia. It was market morning and people were on the go early (we left the Valley at 6:15am, so were on the road and seeing so much until our 10:30am arrival at the airport.