After a terrifyingly choppy five-hour ferry trip across the Strait of Malacca from Malaysia, then a lost number of hours with a minibus driver negotiating dusty, potholed roads at top speed, I eventually started my exploration of Sumatra in Bukit Lawang. Here, thanks to the Bohorok orang-utan reintroduction centre, backpacker cafes and guesthouses once lined the riverbanks, until almost the entire town was destroyed by a flash flood one night in 2003.
Now, the resilient locals are even more welcoming than ever as they are starting to rebuild their businesses. I stayed at Jungle Inn, a brilliantly constructed jumble of fairytale accommodation, with log cabins overlooking waterfalls, and furnished with oversized carved wooden tables and chairs. It is also in an ideal location, right by the river crossing over to the orang-utan centre on the opposite bank.
We had barely crossed the rushing waters in the dug-out canoe when we spotted an extremely hairy orang-utan leisurely sitting on the riverbank, trying to get the last sips from an abandoned can of fizzy drink.
At this reintroduction centre, the orang-utans are semi-wild, having been released from captivity into the jungle but returning for twice-daily feedings at a specially built platform. And it's here that visitors have the privilege to view the feedings. On the footpath through the trees up to the platform by a particularly friendly orang-utan who insisted on holding someone’s hand to help her up the steep path.
One of the centre’s workers carried the bucket of food onto to the platform, and we stood waiting in suspense, peering into the treetops, for the animals’ arrival. It wasn’t long before we heard the distant rustling of branches with the first diner swinging towards us.
We all stood in silent awe as a mother orang-utan, with her baby clinging onto her, lumbered a few feet from us, took the food and then deftly made her way up a tree, to settle on a branch above our heads. The mother let go of the baby, leaving him to dangle from the branch by one spindly arm, spinning one way and then the other until finally slowing to a halt where he continued to dangle non-chalantly. That sight alone already made it well worth that bumpy journey.
For more information on the plight of the Sumatran orangutan, see the websites of the Sumatran Orangutan Society: www.orangutans-sos.org and the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme: www.sumatranorangutan.org.
The Lonely Planet guide to Indonesia will give you the low-down on where to stay and how to get there. I recommend taking along an Lonely Planet Indonesian Phrasebook in handy pocket size. To help you get around, take along a ITMB map of Indonesia, or the more specific Nelles map of Sumatra, complete with insets of its main city centres. For a beautiful insight into the plight of the orang-utan, check out Orangutans - Thinkers of the Jungle.
Author: Rachel Ricks
Date: 11 September 2007
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