Hike in Tana Toraja

We just came back from our trip to Tana Toraja (Toraja Country)

This was such a relaxing experience to slowly make our way throught those beautiful and peaceful pady field and those misty mountains settings...

Because the monsoon is fermely set in Sulawesi, it can start raining heavily anytime from midday.
In order to achieve our 20km daily walk (6to8h walk) without getting soaked, we had to set off around 5h30.
The first couple of hours walk are magnificent...the cold of the night and the mist of last night's rain are enhancing the beautiful mountains and green valleys. People working in their fields are animating this post card view...

The views are superb and the country side ever changing...from walking on a forest road, ligned with pines and wooden chalet resembling our alps, we arrive in post cards of south east asia; padi field, buffalos, and the beautiful Torajan house, beautifully painted and proudly set in their bamboo forests.

A little feeling of being home...pines and wooden chalets!

Torajan house proudly set in the paddy fields

As we climb uphill, the paddy fields are shrinking to rare locations near rivers and duck ponds, and the coffee plants are everywhere on the steep slopes.
Going higher, still, the road becomes a walking track and the coffee plants give way to a wild rain forest (rainy rain forest, believe me!).
Then, after passing the mountain and descending in the next valley, slowly coffee plants reappear, then paddy field, first very small in thight terraces, then taking more and more their ease, until we see smooth valleys of paddy field.

The people is very friendly. The highest and more remote and the friendliest the people. Unfortunatly, when approaching the city of Rantepao, at the end of the trip, we had less thrilling encounters, as the people there are "spoiled" by too many tourist in the peak season...There, they look at us, not as human being interesting to comunicate with, but as sources of money or goods...

Anyway, we hold dear souvenirs of the people of the mountains.
When arriving in a village after our daily hike, we would be welcomed by a family...sometimes, they are used to having guests (they have inns or homestay), sometimes, they just find a space for us.
The houses are really basic, with ice cold water for the shower (aaargh) and rooms where the wind is home...
we spent many nights dressed in our polar fleece under our duvets!!!
But everywhere, we spent joyful hours talking (in Indonesian as they do not speak english) around the kitchen fire, and eating tasty food, home groaw veggies, fresh meat (with Xmas coing up a lot of pork was being killed and we ate a lot of it), fresh fish from the paddy fields, home groan rice and coffe...very simple yet tasty and nourishing meals.

We were hosted by people as different as
a pastor from the protestan pentecost church,
the district head of the elementary school,
a young couple (22years old and 2 kids!!!)
a family of 7, where the kids would be in charge of running the homestay (we saw the mother twice!) ; the little 3years old would bring us the rice, the 8years old the rest of th food, and the elder 18years would do the cooking and organise the youngest...
an old lady, in her nice but declining hotel in the middle of the mountains
the wife of a supervisor of a coffee farm, where we'd share bathroom and toilet with some 20 families of the coffee farm, living in units built by the company for its employee...

From each of them, we learned about their lifes, the rice, the religion, education, the coffee...

Romain found a spiritual father in this head of the elementary school, which provided a Torajan cape to keep him from the cold!

This old lady wanted a picture of herself (probably to stick on her grave later), but as soon as I got the camera out, those kids jumped on their elder in order to make it in the picture...

There is kids everywhere, here...they are the living proof that the government's campaign "dua cukup" (2 is enough) hasn't worked, and that the Sulawesi inhabitants love kids and big families...

We find the kids somehow spoiled and a little disrespectful for the elders...and even their parents...we have seen a lot of them not listening to their parents, without being told off. We even saw one todler refusing to leave his seat to his grand ma, forcing her to sit on the ground, the parents were witnessing that!..Somehow hard to believe that there is such a cultural difference in a society where the kids are more respected than the elder...

Nonetheless most of the kids are fun and sweet, and its a pleasure to take picture of them and show them on the digital screen...they love it and it's endless laughs!

All in all, Tana Toraja is a great place, for the people, the scenery, the beautifully painted and carved houses...it's a guarantee to have beauty thrown at you every step of the way...

One of the beautifully painted and carved Torajan houses. The horns on the main pilar are those of the buffalos that where sacrified in this village. Burrial ceremonies, here, require the sacrifice of hundreds of buffalos, which are cut in pieces, cooked in amboo sticks and fed to thousands of villagers from the whole area.

This is the only reason why buffalos are being bred in this area, as padi fields are now worked with machines.

We come back from this hike as serene as the buffalo in its paddy field!(when there is no burrial ceremony announced!)

06:00 - 2/01/2007 - Ajouter un commentaire