You approach Tuk Tuk from the coastal city of Medan, a fine example of Third World drear, only 110 miles to the northeast. A narrow winding road, crowded with foot traffic and broken-down ox carts and sputtering Eisenhower-era vehicles, leads out of Medan, climbing above the oppressive smog and humidity of the urban lowlands. The landscape is spread with thick black loam, the residue of one of the earth's major volcanic explosions some 75,000 years ago; it's a soil so fertile that a neon profusion of tropical fruits and vegetables shadows the roadside. But, as you soon discover, mangoes and rambuttan (a delicious red fruit covered in hairy fibers) are not the only gifts bestowed by the prehistoric cataclysm that blew part of Sumatra's center wide open.
About 90 miles out of Medan, the road drops over the lip of the volcanic crater and tumbles down to the stunning aquamarine pool of Lake Toba. Sixty miles long and 20 miles across, Toba is the largest freshwater body in Southeast Asia. It's also the most pristine and beautiful lake I've ever seen.
After less than an hour on a ferry filled with more goats and chickens than tourists, you reach the island. Samosir, roughly 10 times the size of Manhattan, is occupied by a few thousand scattered residents and a few hundred blissed-out visitors. The best news for a traveler, though-aside from the fact that the year-round weather is a sun-drenched and dry 80 degrees-is that the island is blessed with excellent basic facilities and nothing more. The shore of the quiet hamlet of Tuk Tuk is lined with thatch-roofed cottages, low-slung hotels, and . . . that's about it.
In the midst of a nominally Muslim country, Tuk Tuk is laid-back and mildly bohemian (there are bars and a few clubs featuring Australian blues musicians) without being sleazy or obnoxious. The food, typically stir-fries or curries over rice, is fresh and simple. Nasi goreng, fried rice topped with an egg, is the Indonesian staple. Even meat eaters ought to sample the variety of uses for tempeh in the land of its origin. And meat eaters alone ought to indulge themselves in the oddly mellow pleasures of a water-buffalo steak.
Here's what you do in Samosir: You walk, you bike, you swim, you rest. And however you decide to pass the day, you'll find yourself amid Batak tribespeople. Their villages comprise a cluster of traditional houses: loftlike spaces on stilts with sharply sloping high ceilings decorated with talismanic carvings. Several families live in each house, sharing a common hearth and sheltering livestock beneath the raised floors. Don't worry about trespassing; just return a Batak's lustily shouted greeting, "Horas!"
Samosir feels like a secret shared by those who live there and the few who visit. You can rent a bike in Tuk Tuk and pedal along footpaths past rice paddies and fields of maize. You can sit in a woodcarver's hut and drink coffee while he whittles a haunted-looking figurine for you. If you're ambitious, you can bushwhack your way up the side of the pine-and-bamboo-matted mountain that sits squarely in the center of the island, and earn an exquisite view of the entire volcanic caldera.
One day, my girlfriend and I rented a motorbike and made our way along the single dirt road that rings the island. We stopped at elaborate stone sarcophagi that were nearly overtaken with moss. At the village of Simanindo, on the island's northern tip, we happened on a group of women, clad in bright silk garments, in the midst of performing a traditional Batak dance. Their movements were slow, sparely choreographed, and appropriately trancelike.
I hesitate to say this, but swimming in Lake Toba feels like an immersion in holy waters. The lake is clear and warm and more than 1,500 feet deep, and except for the rare ferry or dugout canoe, it belongs to you. I spent a few hours in the lake one afternoon, and for the rest of the day I felt like I was practically drifting outside my body.
Tuk Tuk does that sort of thing to people. One man I met on the patio of a hut, drinking fresh guava juice, told me he had left his job as a banker in New York and signed a year's lease on a Samosir beach house, complete with a cook and housekeeper, for less than a month's rent on a New York studio. He didn't think he'd ever return stateside.
It's hard to climb out of the volcano.
