Bukit Lawang

Bukit Lawang exists because of the rainforest behind it. The Bahorok valley was plantation country under Dutch rule, with rubber estates worked by labourers from Java, and the forest above it was protected in stages, later becoming part of Gunung Leuser National Park, which straddles Aceh and North Sumatra. The village itself was a small settlement of estate workers and farmers at the end of the road.

Its modern life began in 1973, when a rehabilitation centre was set up beside the river to return orangutans confiscated from the illegal pet trade to the wild. Animals were taught to climb and forage and were fed from a platform in the forest, a routine that drew the first visitors. The centre itself closed in 2002, the village by then being too busy for rehabilitation work. Guesthouses appeared along the bank, guides trained, and by the 1990s Bukit Lawang was one of the best-known stops on the overland route through Sumatra.

On 2 November 2003 a flash flood swept down the Bahorok at night after heavy rain on slopes stripped by illegal logging. It destroyed most of the guesthouses and killed 239 people, five of them foreign visitors. The village was rebuilt over the following years, set back a little from the water, with an eye on the damage that deforestation upstream had done. Tourism recovered strongly, orangutan viewing moved away from feeding towards trekking to find animals in the forest, and the village now sits at the centre of arguments about how many visitors the park can absorb.

This is a Muslim village in a Karo and Malay part of North Sumatra, with Javanese families descended from plantation workers and Batak incomers as well, and the mosque sets the rhythm of the day as much as the trekking timetable does. Away from the riverside path, life is that of any small Sumatran settlement: rubber tapping before dawn, school, and a slow afternoon under the trees.

Guiding is the village's craft and its social ladder. Most guides are local men who learned the forest from relatives, hold a national park licence, and have a detailed knowledge of individual orangutans, the calls of gibbons and the medicinal use of forest plants. Guiding families are well known to each other, competition for clients on the path can be sharp, and a guide's reputation for keeping proper distance from the animals matters within the community.

Conservation is discussed openly, because it pays wages. Rules about approaching orangutans, not feeding them and not trekking without a permit are widely supported here, even as the palm oil that supports many households eats into the forest downstream. Visitors are expected to be relaxed and sociable — evenings on guesthouse terraces, with guitars and singing, are part of the village's idea of itself — but also respectful of prayer times and modest dress.

Only a few thousand people live in and immediately around the village, in the Bahorok district of Langkat Regency, and almost every household is linked either to tourism or to the plantations. Guiding, guesthouses, cooking, driving and selling snacks and drinks employ a large share of the working population, which makes the place unusually exposed to anything that stops visitors coming, as the 2003 flood and later the pandemic both showed.

The rest of the economy is rubber, oil palm and smallholder farming, with fruit, chillies and vegetables grown on the slopes. Men tap rubber trees early in the morning, and produce is taken down to Bahorok town for sale. Electricity, mobile signal and road access have all improved, but the village remains a long way from a hospital or a bank.

Days start before six with prayers and the first treks, and by early afternoon the heat empties the path. Children swim and play in the shallows, women wash clothes at the river's edge, and the tubes used to float visitors downstream are stacked along the bank. Evenings are quiet and dark. The pressing local concerns are the state of the forest upstream, rubbish and sewage entering the river as visitor numbers rise, and how the money from trekking is shared between guides, guesthouses and the park.

Eating here is simple and mostly done where people sleep. Guesthouse kitchens cook Indonesian staples — nasi goreng and mie goreng, fried rice and noodles; gado-gado, vegetables with peanut sauce; sayur lodeh, vegetables in coconut milk; chicken curry and fried chicken with sambal — and serve them with rice, prawn crackers and sweet tea. River fish, grilled or fried whole, appear when the catch allows.

Sumatran and Karo influences show in the sharpness of the food: sambal made with fresh chillies and lime, gulai curries thickened with coconut milk, and the sour and chilli-heavy dressings of the highlands. Nasi Padang, the West Sumatran spread of curries and stews eaten with rice, is sold in the larger villages downstream. Breakfast for most residents is nasi lemak or lontong with a sambal, and the banana pancakes cooked for visitors are a standing joke along the backpacker route.

Fruit is the real pleasure. Rambutan, mangosteen, jackfruit, papaya and bananas grow around the village, and durian appears at roadside stalls in the middle of the year, when whole families drive out from Medan to buy it. Sweet black coffee and ginger tea are drunk throughout the day, and the food carried on treks is usually rice, egg and vegetables wrapped in banana leaf, with pineapple cut on the trail.