Travel adventure - Padang Highlands in the Sumatra Island, Many visitors to Sumatra take the
bus from medan, the capital of North Sumatra, sout to Padang, the capital of
west Sumatra, via the world’s largest crater lake of lake toba and the padang
highlands. This area extends from around padang sidempuan south of lake toba to
mount kerinci, Sumatra’s tallet mountain, in the south. The winding road
provides some wonderfulscenery with ricefields and fish ponds against a
backdrop of enticing and cool looking, misty blue mountains. In the centre,
near the hill town of Bukittinggi, known by the dutch as fort de kock , are a
great many sights , and it is worth lingering here for a while. At batang
palupuh there is an accessible area of forest where the huge Rafflesia flower
can be seen. Dramatic limestone gorges mark out the lembah harau reserve to the
east and also around payakumbuh there are some caves where busy crowds of bats
and swiftlests tear in and out of the blackness. Two bare coned volcanoes ,
merapi and singgalang , stand guard on either side of Bukittinggi, and the cool
and forest finged crater lake of maninjau is note far away. If one continues
south on the trans Sumatra highway there are interesting cultural sights around
solok, and more spectacular scenery around the sebelas hills. That route,
however, misses out the pair of lakes called diatas and dibawah (meaning above
and below respectively) and also lake kerinci near sungaipenuh, the Gateway
into the huge Mount Kerinci National Park which covers nearly 15,000 square
kilometers (over 5,790 square miles) of lowland and montane forest.
A west Sumatran rural scene
showing a typical Minangkabau house with the forest clad Mount Merapi behind.
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| Padang Highlands in the Sumatra Island |
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| Padang Highlands in the Sumatra Island |
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| Padang Highlands in the Sumatra Island |
