Maintaining tradition in a modern world

It was a bit of an effort to get to Kampung Naga from Tasikmalaya. Although it is on the main road connecting Garut and Tasikmalaya the bus companies coming from Garut stop at a town called Singaparna which is about 15-20km before Tasik. There are, however, the smaller buses, called ELFs (pronounced "elip" because Indonesians don't have the letter "F" in their alphabet, except a few words from Arabic) which don't run from the main Indihiang Terminal, but from the Pasar south of the kota. Finding out this information took considerable time, not helped by ojek drivers offering their services, but finally someone put me on a #18 angkot from the terminal to the pasar and I jumped on an ELF bus to Garut. 3 hours later we had travelled the 40km to Kampung Naga...

Kampung Naga is a village which has decided to keep it's traditional way of life. Although Moslem, they have maintained their more ancient laws and traditions as well. They still have a "king" and continue to live in traditional bamboo houses with thatched roofs, without electricity or inside plumbing. The houses have changed a little though, with glass windows installed and perspex sunlights inserted in the thatch to provide lighting. Some also have TVs, black and white ones that run on car batteries. But not a mobile phone in sight!!

The village is full, with 110 houses sitting cheek by jowl with each other and no room for new buildings. It's a communal way of life where those doing better provide for those doing it hard, and the local men have a fire warden role making sure that there are no errant fires that would have the entire village up in flames in minutes. Since everyone cooks on open hearths inside their houses, this is indeed a really important consideration.

With the village full, the house gets handed down to the youngest child, in fact the youngest girl, as inheritance is matrilineal in Kampung Naga. All the boys and older kids have to find their own way, either through marriage or moving out of the village. Many do head to the big cities for work or study, as employment opportunities locally are limited, but enough seem to stay to keep the village active and thriving. It seems there's little strife or tensions within the village, I guess those who choose to stay accept the limitations and way of life fully.

It's not a bad way of life really. They grow rice (2 harvests a year) for personal use plus sell their excess, they have chickens, sheep and goats, and have fish farms with ginormous goldfish in them. The fish get all the rice hulls to eat and are only used for ceremonies and such so that's probably why they get so big. Plus the communal bathrooms are perched over the fish ponds....

I know all this because I took a guide. It seems only appropriate to provide some money to the village for gawking at them and their lifestyle. I don't think I would have felt comfortable seeing the place without one, plus it gave me the opportunity to go inside a house and learn about their lifestyle.

I then took an ELF back to Tasikmalaya, which took a considerably shorter time and this one actually went to the Indihiang Terminal, which meant one less angkot required to get back to my hotel.

Tomorrow I head to Wonosobo and on to Dieng. This will be the beginning of revisiting some places from last Java trip. Remember, Dieng rocks!!

A few more photos here

Time to go see a volcano, or, a little camping in the woods

I hated Cipanas.

It started with the hotel tout the moment I got off the angkot, whom I ignored. I wandered around looking at unimpressive room after unimpressive room, with asking prices over $20 a night. I really just wanted a cheap room, not a TV and a pool to swim in. Seriously, swimming pools, even warm ones, are just not my thing.

I found a cheap room, but the price would be going up on the weekend, so I just paid for one night. The room itself was pretty dirty and the only reason I didn't leave was because I met a North American couple staying there who said they'd looked elsewhere and hadn't been able to find anything cheaper. And I was tired. So I had a warm wash and headed out for dinner. Sate Goat that was undercooked, tasteless, and expensive. Strike two...

It was Friday night and the place was heaving. People were letting off firecrackers in the street and it was plain noisy. No quiet little spa resort, but noisy tourist trap. Really not my sort of place.

Next morning I got up early and wandered around looking for other housing options. The Americans were right, even places without pools were asking 300,000Rp and more. I wandered around, finding some back streets through the kampungs, and started to think the place wasn't so bad after all. And anyway, I had my period, so always a good idea to not do anything adventurous on my heavy days. Hahahahahaha!!!

I ask at the hotel if I can stay another night, to discover that the hotel is now fully booked for the weekend and I have to leave. They tell me that I can get a room for 200,000Rp (same as what I would have paid at the hotel I'm being kicked out of) at a hotel next door, but the person I need to speak to is still sleeping and I need to come back later. That seals the deal, I don't like the place, time to leave.

I take an angkot into Garut and sit at the terminal drinking an avocado juice - seriously folks why isn't this a drink in Australia it's freaking delicious - and decide my next move. I have camping gear, stove, fuel, even food though I could do with a little more, why don't I go camping?? I jump on a bus to Cisurupan (15,000Rp) and am immediately attacked by the ojek mafia when I arrive. I take refuge in a nearby Alphamart and stock up on noodles, biscuits and water. When I walk outside to repack my supplies into my backpack I meet a couple of young fellows also going camping, who ask if I want to join them. Some sort of negotiation with the ojek mafia goes on, I think along the line of "if the bule pays this much we'll give you boys a cheaper price" (it's pretty easy to read shady body language), but I wasn't going to make a big deal. I ended up paying 40,000Rp, the boys say they did too but a bit of my money seemed to get passed on to the other two drivers, and a couple of Jakarta lads we met say they paid 30,000Rp, which is probably the correct price. But one has to keep these things in perspective. 10,000Rp is one dollar peeps!!

So, the mountain I am off to camp on is Gunung Papandayan. This is a very active volcano, with steaming geysers, bubbling streams of hot water, hot vents spewing sulphur, quite spectacular actually. I check in at the post, fill in the book and the paperwork and pay the foreigners entry fee of 15,000Rp per day, then go find the boys. We got left behind on the way up the hill when my ojek's bike overheated and the engine cut out. A bit of water thrown on the carby cools it down and we are away.

Soon we are heading up into the volcano crater and I remember something rather important. It's the first day of my period, something I often euphemistically call "stuck pig day", and I haven't been to a toilet for a few hours. And there are no more toilets to be found till my return down the mountain tomorrow. Let's just say I'm feeling a little uncomfortable...

Then I recall a comment made by Robyn Davidson in her book "Tracks", about her trip across Australia with camels, where she describes just letting that sort of stuff go. OK she was in the middle of nowhere and I'm on a track with a whole bunch of other trekkers, but it's really the attitude that counts. I have no idea how much of a mess I am in, but I decide to cease caring. Eventually we find a stream and I leave the boys to rest whilst I undress, wash my heavily soiled clothes and readjust, so to speak. Nobody comments on my strategically soaking wet pants when I rejoin my companions, we simply keep trekking. And I am saved for now.

We pass through a gap in the mountain and arrive at the first camping site. No-one actually camps here, but you pull out your paperwork to fill your details into another book and pay some money, I think they are camping fees. I pay 5000Rp, the same as the boys. We then track around the mountain even higher up, overlooking the volcano below. The clouds are settling in by now, so we move smartly through to the camping site, which is already heavily occupied with large groups of people. There are tents everywhere, and many people have quite a lot of gear with them. There's musical instruments too, so all evening and into the night we can hear various groups singing. At one point I think I even heard Hotel California! Adele's also very popular.....

The boys, Robby and Becek, and I quickly find a campsite and set up camp before the rain sets in. We are only just in time, and I join them in their tent whilst I boil my billy for a nice warm cup of coffee. Mmmm...

I've brought along a stove that uses white spirit, what we call meths at home. Here it required quite a bit of effort to find because you can't find it in any old hardware store like you would at home. I'd been told by Thammy (the Carita guy) that I could get alcohol at a dispensary, or apotek, but when I went to one in Bogor I discovered they just sell up to 70% for cleaning purposes, and the guy there didn't have any idea where I could get some. I asked in a few more shops, tried to find some info on the internet, but wasn't getting anywhere. Then one lady in a shop suggested somewhere near the markets, but that they would be closed on the weekend. Since I still had my cold and was staying a bit longer in town I made one final effort to find some. Short answer: go to a paint shop. That's Toko Cat (pronounced "chut") and ask for Spritus. It's 7000Rp for a bottle. Easy once you know how...

The rain settled in for the night. I cooked up some noodles and showed the boys my windsurfing video and a few photos from home, then I headed back to my hammock and to bed. It was cold so, after a little experimentation, I ended up placing my space blanket between my sleeping bag and the hammock to insulate me from the cold below. My clothes were damp from the rain, but the vest, the cycling arms, and my wool t-shirt over the top off all that, gave me enough warmth inside the sleeping bag to sleep fairly well. Dry socks helped too. The hammock kept me much dryer than the poor boys in their tent, who woke up to find themselves sleeping in a puddle.

The rain cleared by morning and an early rise saw some blue skies before the clouds gathered again. There's a climb up to the summit and a field of edelweiss, but I wasn't keen, what with the clouds having rolled in again and the fact that I had a little unfinished womens business. The campsite, by the way, had a good water supply, so I was easily able to attend to my needs. This is definitely a situation where a Divacup is a much better option than tampons or pads. The boys were initially keen to do the climb, but a look at the clouds rolling in changed their minds and we all packed and headed back down the mountain, where we had to show our paperwork again and get crossed off as having returned. I even met another westerner, a French guy who'd also camped the night, but I'd not met him up there, what with the rain and the crowds.

Back down at the bottom I took the opportunity to use the ladies before we jumped on ojeks again. The boys are from Tasikmalaya, and since that's my next stop, I jumped on the same buses as them. They gave me a hotel recommendation, and a bunch of places to see, told me prices of transport around town, then we parted ways. More wonderful friendly people in this great country.

I'm staying at a hotel 13km north of the city centre. Even though it's on the main highway and also near the train line it's not that noisy and it's not right next to a mosque!! It's cheap (100,000Rp/night), it's clean, and the service is good. It's only 3000Rp into town on an angkot, so I'm staying a few days to wash the clothes, dry the camping gear, and see a few things round about.

The rest of the volcano photos are here.

Another mythical place revealed

Remember when I went to Shangri-La? A town in China said to be the place that a novelist made up in a novel he wrote in a rainy flat in London? Well today I visited another mythical place: Atlantis!

I'm always amused by believers. People who decide a particular thing and then find the evidence to prove their belief. Of course any evidence that disproves their belief is immediately discarded as manufactured or corrupt. A typical, rather dangerous, example is the anti-immunisation lobby, but the Atlantis believers, well I think they're pretty harmless.

So, Plato writes about this great lost civilisation of Atlantis. Apparently it's not fiction, it's fact. Hmm... Then in 1914 or thereabouts, some Dutch people find this ruin on a hill in Cianjur region and discover it's quite old. Megalithic old. The locals, of course, have known about it for eons, and it's considered a bit sacred by them, but in general, this place just stays hidden, and continues to not be that well known about outside the region. Then recently some further research is done, including some core sampling, that identifies that the site is even older than first imagined. Maybe as old as.....Atlantis!! Yes, you can see the leap of faith here can't you?

I'd heard about Gunung Padang from my internet surfing, because it doesn't feature in guidebooks. It is, however, well known locally. Big signs at the highway turnoff, and on other turns along the way mean that anyone making their way there by private transport could not possibly get lost. I however, took public transport.

On the angkot down from Selabintana I met a wonderful woman my age named Yugi. She has a farm in Selabintana and a house in Bandung, where she was returning to, so I joined her for a while on the same bus. She showed me where to get off at Warungkambong village (there's a big sign saying "Gunung Padang Megalith Situs" peeps, you can't miss it) and also told me which bus to take from Cianjur for my next destination. People like Yugi who are so friendly and helpful are why I love Indonesia so much. Yugi has even invited me to stay with her in Bandung, which I'd love to at some stage, but for now I have had to pass.

From Warungkambong I took an ojek to Gunung Padang. This cost me 150,000Rp for the return trip. We also stopped in at Lampegan Station, because I'd heard it was an old abandoned colonial railway station with a tunnel you can walk through. No more peeps, it's a fully functional railway station, with trains connecting Cianjur with Sukabumi and Bogor three times a day. This train line has only been active again since the start of this year. There's still disused line between Cianjur and Bandung, I'm assuming the locals wouldn't mind if that got rehabilitated as well! So it's totally possible to take a train to Lampegan, from Cianjur, Bogor or Sukabumi and only then have a short (therefore much cheaper!!) ojek ride to the site.

The ojek ride is quite scenic, the final bit through tea plantations, but the road is the usual potholed nightmare. Sitting on the back of a bike is not very comfortable, though it's a great way to see the countryside.

There's a little infrastructure at the site itself - some pictures and diagrams about some of the research done there, concrete steps up to the site and viewing platforms. Entry fee is 5000Rp for foreigners and I choose to climb the less steep, but less dramatic concrete steps. There's two tiers of stones visible, and there's one theory that the entire hill is a man made pyramid. Since only the top two tiers are visible, and the rest of the hill is covered in vegetation, it's a little hard to really get the scope of how big this might actually be. I'll let the pictures speak.

For my descent I take the steep steps, made from the basalt rocks from the site, and return back along the long bumpy road on the motorbike to the highway. From there I take an angkot to Cianjur and then a bus to Garut. They drop me off at the Cipanas turnoff and I take an angkot up to the hot spa village. My room has hot water for the first time in Indonesia! What luxury!

Trouble is, I hate the place. That's next...