Lake Toba, a Second Time

Half an hour after stepping out from Silangit airport’s tiny arrivals hall into a parking lot bathed in morning sunshine, the promised hotel pickup was still nowhere to be seen. It was hardly an auspicious start to a hectic five-day assignment on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Joining me this time was British photographer Martin Westlake, who’d also shot my Bali food story six months before. Our flight had left Jakarta at 6:45 a.m. on a Monday and we were keen to hit the ground running. But it took a series of WhatsApp messages and then a phone call — in which Martin didn’t hide his frustration — for the front desk to finally scramble another driver nearby. (The no-show, someone later explained apologetically, was because of a flat tire. It seemed odd that no one at reception thought to contact us then.)

Silangit may be the closest airport to Lake Toba, but the journey to our hotel was far from over. It would take another three and a half hours to reach the small town of Parapat, before a 55-minute ferry ride across the water to Samosir, the nearly Singapore-sized island at the center of the lake. Only then would we arrive at the recently opened Marianna Resort.

My mission was to build a compelling story around the largest volcanic lake in the world, while showcasing the unique culture of the area’s indigenous Toba Batak people. “It should be about interesting people doing interesting things,” our editor-in-chief had said. Hours and hours of research had gone into compiling a shortlist of locally based creatives and entrepreneurs, mostly women, who would fit the bill. I also handled the logistics of booking flights and finding two or three hotels where Martin and I could stay on a relatively tight budget. A younger coworker volunteered to take care of arranging a rental car and driver for much of the trip.

First light from a vantage point halfway up the hill of Bukit Holbung

A newly built Jesus statue crowns a small headland on the lake

Sunrise over the western arm of Lake Toba

Overlooking the village of Hariara Pohan

Fertile fields and fire-scarred hillsides

Martin poses with a group of Batak campers

Lake Toba’s Jesus statue is a smaller version of its famed cousin in Rio de Janeiro

Sadly, Indonesia’s astounding cultural diversity is little appreciated outside its borders. Not many people abroad have even heard of the Batak, a catch-all term for a handful of closely related ethnic groups that have lived in the Sumatran highlands since time immemorial: the Angkola, Karo, Mandailing, Pakpak, Simalungun, and Toba. In Jakarta, where they make up a small but visible minority, the long-settled Batak have a reputation for being particularly gifted when it comes to music. (A disproportionate number of artists in Indonesian showbiz are of Batak descent.) Batak people are by nature plainspoken and direct, and known for aggressive driving. Which says something in a country where traffic rules are merely seen as suggestions. Ryan, the twentysomething who chauffeured us around Toba for four of those five days, went full speed ahead in the predawn darkness and often swerved around tight corners like a rally driver.

This region of Sumatra wasn’t new ground for either of us; Martin had backpacked around Lake Toba in the early nineties, while I’d visited with Bama during our six-month Spice Odyssey a decade ago. At the time, I declared the area one of my favorite parts of Indonesia. It still is. Complementing its striking scenic beauty and rich Toba Batak traditions was the quietness of it all. Because the Toba Batak are predominantly Christian, Bama and I found the Islamic call to prayer noticeably absent from the local soundscape. The silence we experienced was broken only on one or two occasions by the roar of a few jetskis on the lake.

Returning to Toba all these years later gave me moments of déjà vu. While cruising down the two-lane road following much of Samosir’s shoreline, I recognized the beautiful vernacular house where Bama and I stopped to take photos one sunny morning in 2015. At Carolina Cottage, the second of three hotels I’d booked for this trip, I may have been assigned the exact same barebones room we slept in that summer. It was adequate but hardly restful — a creature scratching and scrambling heavily across the roof jolted me awake at 3 in the morning.

Descending from Bukit Holbung

A well-watered land of plenty

Toba Batak tombs amid the rice paddies at Hariara Pohan

Smoke rising over the fields; a centuries-old sarcophagus of a local king

The tomb and an old stilt house make up part of the Huta Simarmata compound

An outdoor cooking demonstration of local specialty “dekke nanisorbukan”

The same dish in its final form; sculpted details on a homestay in Hariara Pohan

The lakefront infinity pool at the Marianna Resort

Another thing that hadn’t changed was the area’s tranquil character. While parts of Bali are buckling under the pressures of overtourism and rampant overdevelopment, Lake Toba felt almost untouched in comparison; there were none of the crowds or traffic jams clogging Ubud and the beachside resort areas in Bali’s south. We were told it was technically peak season for European tourists, though Martin and I counted less than 20 Western backpackers the entire time we were in Toba. There wasn’t a single other foreigner on the slopes of Bukit Holbung, a grassy hill on the western shores of the lake we climbed just in time for sunrise. But Toba is not exactly pristine. Even at Bukit Holbung, the campsites were strewn with plastic trash — a sign of Indonesia’s prevailing litterbug culture and the nationwide garbage disposal problem.

Later that morning, Martin and I shared a meal with a Toba Batak family inside their ancestral home after a cooking demonstration of the rare local specialty dekke nanisorbukan, prepared with lake-caught fish. We were told it isn’t served in eateries because of the labor-intensive way it’s made. Over in Pangururan, the biggest town on Samosir, a bit of sleuthing on Google Maps led us to Rumah Makan Siaek Mual. We were the first customers of the day at the no-frills roadside eatery, and quickly settled in for a hearty brunch of Batak favorites. From the display counter I picked out tilapia freshly grilled over charcoal and then dressed in sour-savory tombur spice paste; subtly sweet dali ni horbo (indigenous Batak buffalo cheese); tart arsik pork belly with thickly sliced bamboo shoots; and sayur ikaurata, or cassava leaves in a lightly spiced broth featuring coconut milk. Our favorite though was the sayur panggang that accompanied the Karo-style barbecued pork: boiled and pounded cassava leaves tossed with stir-fried banana heart, torch ginger, and chopped melt-in-the-mouth pork fat.

Though still far from being a fluent Indonesian speaker, I could comprehend enough of the language to understand more about Toba Batak culture in a way that just wasn’t possible in 2015. It was edifying to hear local figures explain the significance of their craft traditions and customs in their own words. A twentysomething fashion designer told us all about ulos textiles when we met her in the weaving village of Huta Raja, where the great majority of residents still live in saddle-roofed stilt houses known as rumah bolon. Several days later, an artisan decoded the philosophies behind the intricate gorga woodcarvings that are inseparable from Toba Batak architecture.

Rainclouds approaching Bukit Sipira, a viewpoint in eastern Samosir

Looking across the lake from Bukit Sipira

Bukit Sipira’s rolling hilltop meadows

A double rainbow (look closely on the left) near the eastern shores of the lake

Ornate “gorga” carvings on a house in Huta Raja; a miniature “rumah bolon” on a tomb

The recently reroofed Toba Batak stilt houses of Samosir’s Huta Raja village

Naptime on a drizzly morning

The assignment was also an opportunity to get to know Martin a bit better. We’d bonded during our time working together in Bali, and picked up on honest, heart-to-heart conversations where we had left off. During the longish drives up and down Samosir, we talked about life, our work, and our dreams. Martin described how he made the leap from offshore surveying in the lucrative oil and gas industry to building a successful career out of his twin passions for travel and photography, and recounted his solo treks to distant corners of Indonesia for a long-term passion project about its volcanoes. He was thinking of extending his stay to summit an active volcano about a four-hour drive to the north of Toba, but an important assignment back in Jakarta meant ditching those plans.

Martin, it turns out, had a wish list of his own for this trip. “One thing I would love to see is a traditional Batak dance — but not put on for tourists.” On our last full day exploring Lake Toba, we witnessed just that. While Ryan drove us down the east coast of Samosir, the three of us stumbled across a group of local kids, wearing colorful headdresses and ulos scarves, practicing their moves to uptempo music in a dirt schoolyard. It was a moment of unscripted magic that reminded me just how lucky I was to live in this part of the world. ◊

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Postscript: The full online version of the story I wrote for DestinAsian magazine can be found here — Lake Toba’s Enduring Magic.

Preparing the grill at Rumah Makan Siaek Mual in Pangururan

Our Batak-style brunch featuring lake fish and pork at the same eatery

Traditional Batak buffalo cheese (dali ni horbo); tilapia on the grill

A village church on the eastern side of Samosir

Kids walking to school down the road from the church

Turkey berry flowers at Ecovillage Silimalombu, also on Samosir

The terraced permaculture gardens of Ecovillage Silimalombu

A gorga carving in progress at a sculptor’s forest studio; pointing the way

The reconstructed palace of King Sisingamangaraja XII, south of the lake

These richly detailed gorga carvings date back to the late ’70s and early ’80s

The buildings are thatched in palm fiber; a friendly-looking gorga

A masterpiece of Toba Batak craftsmanship