Category: Indonesia

Indonesian coffee is delicate with a slightly spicy aroma. And I drank the most delicious in this wilderness, on the top of the Samosir plateau, looking down at the lake and the vastness.

On the graves of relatives, especially eminent ones, it is customary to put rich tombstones with traditionally depicted human faces. At first I thought it was such a decorative abstraction. But then I looked closely at the locals.

Coming to a new country, we definitely go to the market, to the historical museum and to the cemetery. There was no need to go to the cemetery in Samosir, graves and monuments here are one of the main elements of the landscape.

It seemed to me that the houses – directed upwards with saddle roofs, despite their massiveness, seemingly light due to the intricate openwork design, most expressed the fantasy and flight of the spirit of these people. The Bataki are very fond of music and their homes I imagined the embodiment of their songs in wood.

Pagan magic still lives on in today’s Christian Samosir. Is this a tourist attraction or a living tradition?

We were suddenly carried away by the question: how did it happen that the most “barbaric” (according to European concepts) peoples (Bataks in the west and Papuans in the east) turned out to be Christians? And despite the fact that around, in the once Hindu Indonesia, Islam was already flourishing with might and main.

The inhabitants of the island actually do not need communication with the outside world: everything you need is here. Dense forests on the slopes of the mountains have always provided the Batak with building materials for their houses. We picked delicious mango and avocado for breakfast from the ground around our house, and we were too lazy to climb trees for bananas.