Samosir

Samosir is the centre of the Toba Batak world. Batak tradition places the origin of the people at Pusuk Buhit, the mountain above the western shore, and the island's villages trace themselves to clans, the marga, whose founders are remembered by name. For centuries these were small independent settlements, each a huta of a few houses behind a bamboo rampart, ruled by a raja and bound to its neighbours by marriage and feud. The stone chairs at Ambarita and the carved sarcophagi at Tomok belong to that order, and ritual cannibalism, well documented before colonial times and reported by early European visitors, was performed on enemies and the condemned.

Christianity arrived with German Rhenish missionaries in the second half of the 19th century, above all Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen, and reshaped Batak life: churches replaced the old rituals, literacy spread, and the island became overwhelmingly Protestant while keeping its clan structures intact. Dutch control followed the long campaign against the Batak resistance led by Sisingamangaraja XII, who was killed in 1907.

After independence the island remained poor and agricultural, and its young people left in large numbers for Medan and Java. Foreign backpackers discovered Tuktuk in the 1970s and 1980s, and guesthouses spread along the peninsula until visitor numbers fell away in the late 1990s. Since then Lake Toba has been named a national tourism priority, the roads and the airport south of the lake have improved, and in 2020 the caldera was recognised as a UNESCO Global Geopark.

Batak identity is unusually strong and openly displayed. Everyone belongs to a marga, a patrilineal clan named on a gravestone and in an introduction, and the rules of who may marry whom and who owes respect to whom follow from it. The system of dalihan na tolu, the three hearth stones, defines obligations between a man's own clan, his wife-givers and his wife-takers, and it governs weddings and funerals to this day.

Those ceremonies are the island's great cultural events. A funeral for an elder with many descendants is a celebration lasting days, with gondang ensembles of drums and reed pipes, the tortor dance that the music accompanies, and the presentation of ulos, the woven cloth draped over the shoulders of those being honoured. Concrete tombs, often large and brightly painted, stand in fields beside the houses and are a striking feature of the landscape.

Music runs through everything else as well. Batak choral singing in close harmony is known across Indonesia, and guitars appear in lapo taverns and guesthouses most evenings. The old gabled houses, with their carved facades, soaring roofs and lizard motifs, remain the island's emblem even though most families now live in concrete bungalows. Manners are direct and loud by Javanese standards, and questions to strangers are frank.

About 145,000 people live in Samosir Regency by the 2025 official estimate. The regency takes in the island and a strip of the mainland shore, and Pangururan, its seat, is the only place of any size. Farming is the mainstay: wet rice on the terraces, maize, coffee, onions, chillies, pigs and buffalo, along with fish cages in the shallows and floating fish farms that have become a point of argument over water quality. Tourism supports Tuktuk, Tomok and Ambarita and little else.

Villages are strung along the shore roads and scattered across the plateau, and life is organised around family, church and the marga. Days begin early and finish early; by nine in the evening most places are dark apart from the guesthouses and a lapo or two. Markets rotate between towns, and Pangururan's is the busiest.

The island's central problem is that its young people leave. Batak families place great value on education, and children are sent to school and university in Medan or Java, from where most do not return. Money flows back the other way as remittances and as the crowds that arrive each Christmas. Local government hopes that improved roads, the airport and the geopark designation will bring enough visitors to change that, while residents also worry about falling lake levels and the clarity of the water.

Batak cooking is the most distinctive in Sumatra, and unlike most Indonesian food it is not Muslim: pork is central, and so is the palm wine, tuak, drunk in the lapo. Saksang is minced pork simmered with spices, coconut and traditionally blood; babi panggang is roast pork served with a sour dipping sauce. Both are ordinary lapo food here and almost unobtainable elsewhere in the country.

The defining seasoning is andaliman, a small green peppercorn related to Sichuan pepper that leaves a tingling numbness on the tongue. It flavours arsik, carp cooked slowly with turmeric, garlic, chilli and the fruit of the torch ginger until the sauce is almost dry, and naniura, a dish of raw carp "cooked" in kaffir lime juice that tradition says was once reserved for kings. Lake fish, mostly common carp and tilapia, appear grilled or fried on almost every menu.

Alongside these are the plainer things: rice with vegetables and chilli sambal, sweetcorn roasted at the roadside, and mangoes, avocados and passion fruit from the highlands. Coffee is serious business, since North Sumatra grows some of the most famous arabica in the world, and a cup of strong local coffee with a doughnut-like fried snack is the standard mid-morning pause. Guesthouses in Tuktuk also cook banana pancakes and pasta for visitors who want a break from chillies.