Our destination today was Tangkahan, a little "village" about 100kms north of Bukit Lawang ... driving on one of the shockingly worst roads I've ever had the pleasure of being on!!! In fact the condition of the road contributed to today's 'adventure' being even more than I had planned for. Not quite at Tangkahan and the vehicle we were travelling in broke down ... we suspect it may have broken it's axle. Not having a lot of options in the middle of nowhere, we found ourselves being driven the last few kilometres on the back of two motorcycles that happened to be the first thing to pass by where we broke down. In the cities a 'motorcycle taxi' is called an ojek, and given the traffic in Jakarta they are sometimes a much more viable option...even if they are a little fear inducing. This particular time though these weren't really taxis as just two very nice people.
Shortly after leaving Bukit Lawang the road went up a hill to a little lookout area, and the view over the mountains and palm plantations was fantastic.
The crude palm oil (CPO) industry is increasing important for Indonesia - Indonesia is the world’s largest CPO producer - and it makes an enormous and vital contribution to the country’s export and employment rate. But as important as that is, we know it's also the palm oil plantations that are threatening the jungle habitat here in North Sumatra. During the last decade, the oil palm industry in Indonesia has been developing rapidly. In 1999, the total area of palm oil plantation was approximately 3.9 million hectares and it had grown into a whopping 7.3 million hectares in 2009. As you can see, the management of this situation is an important one for Indonesia.
This is one of the palm oil factories that I passed in my travels today, with the little "village" just outside the gate.
A long line of trucks filled with the palm fruits is waiting to go inside. Here in Indonesia the palm fruit is processed and the oil extracted. After the oil is extracted the liquid oil then leaves the factory in tanker trucks that take it to the coast, most often for export to Malaysia where it is further processed for either consumption or to be used in the various products that contain palm oil (e.g. soaps, cosmetics, etc.).
En route to Tangkahan we passed a couple of schools in the local villages. I stopped at one to take a photo and was immediately spotted by some of the kids. You can see what happened...
We finally arrived at Tangkahan which is not really even a village, rather it's more of another entrance into Gunung Leuser National Park with a handful of very basic bungalows. The attraction to Tangkahan though is elephants!!
The Sumatran elephant is one of three recognized subspecies of the Asian elephant and it's native to the island of Sumatra. In general, Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants, the Sumatran elephant has smaller ears than the African elephant and the Sumatran elephant also has a more curved spine than the African elephant. Unlike the African elephants, the female Sumatran elephants very rarely have tusks, and if the female Sumatran elephant does have tusks, they are generally barely visible and can only be seen when the female Sumatran elephant opens her mouth.
Today, the Sumatran elephant is considered to be an animal that is in immediate danger of becoming extinct due to the fact that Sumatran elephant populations have been declining at a critical rate. Sumatran elephants are thought to be suffering primarily due to habitat loss in the form of deforestation and hunting for their ivory tusks by human poachers.
Today the adventure started by crossing the Kualsa Buluh River on a 'ferry'... of sorts. We didn't have to use the bridge you can see in the photo although I must admit I think it would have been fun.
And the reason for the river crossing ... to get to the elephants that were on the other side!
Then for the next few kilometres I was in heaven, riding through the jungle on the back of one of my most favourite animals.
The organization that we did the elephant trek with has 7 elephants as part of their trekking troupe and all of them have been rescued from situations where otherwise they likely would have been killed (e.g. coming into a village). Theo - the one I was riding - is the only male and there are 6 females. There is also one elephant calf who is 17 months old.
After leaving the elephants it was time to head back to Medan - which was about a four hour drive. I passed some of the time by trying to take some photos of the scenery. As you can imagine, taking photos out the window of a car, while moving, and on a shockingly bumpy road wasn't a particularly easy thing to do but I do hope these photos will give you an idea.
Building a new church around the old one.
Another palm oil factory.
A little food stand set up in the middle of the palm plantation
Looking out the front windscreen and finally, something that indicates we're going the right way to Medan.
We knew we were back in the city when we started to see becaks again.
We arrived back in Medan just in time to get the last flight back to Jakarta. I was incredibly tired but boy did I ever have a wonderful four days!!
amazing pictures, and your hair is long!!
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