Tag Archives: pulau weh

Ishwinder can’t swim. No she cannot. But that hasn’t kept her from jumping into water bodies if I am already in there to hold her hand and with a life jacket she knows no bounds. We had been on a snorkelling trip once before in Malaysia and thought we could certainly manage a close to the edge of the sea snorkelling here in Pulao Weh.  Did I tell you yet that the clear waters of Pulau Weh are considered one of the best places in the world to go Snorkelling? We could see fish swimming in the water right from our balcony which was located over the sea. Well, more about that later. But know for sure that it was a beautiful day. The sea was turquoise blue. There was no wind blowing which was a good thing because leave alone winds even mild breezes make the sea in Pulau Weh turbulent. And turbulent sea is fine for me but just that poor Ishwinder hadn’t slept for two nights. For someone who could sleep on a bumpy bus, to a rocky flight or even in wedding parties, not being able to sleep for two nights was something I secretly found very funny. Somehow, the waves hitting on the wooden foundations of our hut hanging off a rocky cliff didn’t feel very safe to her. She would spend the night researching our next trip and sleep only a couple of hours in the morning when she was sure that I was awake and in case there was a tsunami I would alert her. What I will be able to do in that situation was not her concern. Why are we talking about tsunami here? Because this region, this middle of nowhere was one of the worst hit areas of Tsunami in …

Put it next to the much famed Kohs of Thailand or the very chic, Bali, Sumatra will seem a humble tourist destination. And it doesn’t take long to figure that after you have landed here. You might be the only tourist queuing up for visa and wonder if you should have really come here. Even though accommodation and food is cheap, there are no hoards of backpackers passing months along in cheap hostels. Even the luxury travelers seeking lake cruises with sunset dinners don’t get here. There are no souvenir thrusting rows of shopkeepers (although plenty of artifacts to be bought at cheap prices because, you see, Bataks are excellent carpenters).  Nor are there any expensive restaurants to fine dine in and spend your cash. Sumatra, I must declare at the onset, is not for bling seeking, chic tourist with a cash load to splurge.  It is for the one seeking slow pace and the charm of the offbeat. It is for the traveler who can work a little harder than usual and accommodate in rooms that have bathrooms no wash basin. Home to millions of hectares of tropical rain forest, tribes that were cannibalistic until about 200 years ago, culture that worships breast and lizard, orang-utans who they say are the people of the jungle, the largest flower and the biggest snake in the world, Sumatra is the superlative island of superlatives. For the two weeks in one month we spent on Sumtra, we were held captive on the Samosir. The unassuming hospitality of our hosts didn’t help us escape either. Samosir is an island set on the caldera lake called Danau Toba formed thousands of years ago after a big boom happened that changed the face of the Earth. If you thought, Pyramids , Taj Mahal , Colosseum …