Bukit Lawang

Last summer, after staying in lovely Bukit Lawang for three weeks, I took four days to visit some other parts of Sumatra: Berastagi/Brastagi, on the slopes of the volcanic Mt. Sibayak, where I planned to spend two nights and hike up the volcano, and gorgeous Lake Toba and the island…

Dateline: Bukit Lawang, Sumatra. On the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park, where orang-utans still swing in the trees, gibbons sing out for mates, pythons slither and corpse flowers stink. Brown-eyed boys tout jungle treks and strum lovelorn tunes on their beat-up guitars. They roll their r’s and they…