The first hitchhike of the day was in a police van. Three Indonesian officers pull over, grinning, motioning for us to climb into the back. They look like they’ve been living off mie goreng since childhood.
Between scraps of English and enthusiastic hand gestures, we try to figure out where each other is going. A chorus of nods, a smiling thumbs up… we’re all headed in the same direction. Great.
Thirty minutes later, we’re dropped off in the middle of nowhere.
We find out we’re in a small village near Lake Toba. School kids swarm the roadside, waving at us like we’re living, breathing characters from their favourite Disney movie. The reactions we get from locals in these little towns are varied, but always heart-warming. Surprise giving way to shock, then laughter, then wide, curious smiles. Sometimes they stare as if they’ve seen ghosts. And maybe they have. We’re probably the whitest things to pass through here all year.
After an hour, a quick coffee at a local mama’s food stall and the best noodle soup I’ve ever had, we finally catch the back of a pickup truck rattling its way toward the harbour. From there, the road becomes a string of human connections: a twenty-something guy with big tattoos and braces who insists on introducing us to his favourite Indonesian rap songs; an old man with flawless English who tells stories about the years he spent guiding tourists up the island’s (still active) volcanoes, and a schoolteacher with a canvas bag on the passenger seat and chalk-soft hands. On the way, she stops at her local vegetable market. She shows us where to buy avocados and fruit. We eat mangosteens in the shade of the Batak houses, their juice running down our wrists, and climb back into the car with sweet, sticky fingers.
Northern Sumatra is rugged and green and wildly alive. Dramatic hills roll into one another, mist clings to mountain tops, jungles crowd the edges of the road, so dense they feel like they’re breathing.
I spent the past week swimming in cold mountain streams, hiking up the steepest, slipperiest trails I’ve ever attempted just to catch a glimpse of orangutans on their lazy commute from one nest to another. Sleeping in the jungle. Hitchhiking with strangers. Sharing stories with a maximum of eight English words. Giving myself over to the mind-blowing beauty of randomness.
That’s what I love most about travelling like this… the randomness. The surrender to the flow and to the kindness of strangers. Letting go of control and transactions. Putting myself, quite literally, at the mercy of people I don’t know.
It humbles you. It pulls you out of the curated, bought, managed version of the tourist world and drops you into the everyday lives of others. Into pickup trucks and vegetable markets, and the cramped middle seat.
In that vulnerability, something special opens up. Connection that isn’t paid for. Curiosity that isn’t performative.
Just humans meeting humans, briefly, honestly, in motion.
I love you, Sumatra.
I love you, life.
(Thoughts stirred by a recent, beautiful conversation with someone special, coming to the podcast next week.)
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