Lake Toba. The Batak

From Medan you can go not only to see the orangutans in Bukit Lawang. Travelers also come here to visit Lake Toba.

It’s a volcanic lake in the center of Sumatra. To get there, you have to sweat and bounce around in an Indonesian minibus for three hours. So on the way you can stop at the village of Lingga, home to the Batak — an indigenous people of Sumatra.

The Batak

The Batak have long been Christians or Muslims. At the entrance to the village stands a church.

The word KATOLIK is laid out on the church’s pediment, but you can tell from the roof that the building wasn’t originally a church at all.

As soon as I came closer, all the parishioners jumped up. Each of them asked to shake my hand.

Inside, it looks like a typical church in an LA ghetto.

But the church roof hints that the real religion of the Batak is paganism. It’s easier to see on the house next door.

The roofs of Batak houses are covered with dried palm leaves. The roof is shaped like four crossed tetrahedra, and each roof is crowned with a smaller copy of itself. The triangle sticking out of the roof is decorated with mosaics. Buffalo horns are mounted on the corners of the tetrahedra.

The Batak religion is called Malim. Its followers are called Parmalim. There are vanishingly few of them: only five to ten thousand people. And that’s out of nine million Batak in Sumatra.

The Parmalim believe that in the beginning there was only the sky and a great sea beneath it. The gods lived in the sky, and the dragon Naga Padoha lived in the sea. The supreme god, named Mulajadi Nabolon, lived in the sky. He had three sons. And not just from anywhere, but from eggs laid by his wife, who is depicted as a bird. Then he also produced three daughters and married them off to his sons in pairs.

And what was the dragon Naga Padoha doing all this time? Enjoying life and not bothering anyone in particular.

However, one of the daughters of one of Nabolon’s sons decided to create the Earth. And she did. And not just anywhere, but right on the dragon’s head. Poor Naga Padoha groaned under the weight of the Earth and tried to throw it off. And he would have, if Nabolon’s granddaughter hadn’t plunged a huge sword into the serpent and pinned the poor reptile to an iron mountain.

The dragon survived. Now every time he writhes in pain, there’s an earthquake.

These are the fairy tales the Batak believe in. They borrowed the dragon Naga Padoha from Hinduism, where a naga is a serpent with a human head. The word naga means “snake” in Sanskrit. The god’s name, Mula Jadi Na Bolon, translates as “the source of all things.”

Also, before their mass conversion to Christianity and Islam, the Batak were cannibals. People were eaten in these parts as recently as 150 years ago.

Of course, little is left of the original Batak culture. The village has a few houses with traditional roofs. Huge satellite dishes stand right next to them.

Only three Batak houses remain in Lingga, and nobody has lived in them for a long time. They’re used for storing preserves and showing to tourists.

Batak houses were built without nails. To protect against snakes and water, they were built on stilts. A ladder was used to get into the house.

The rim around the house was painted with ornaments.

The roof was decorated with mosaics, and a buffalo skull hung on top to protect the house from evil spirits.

The roof was covered with dry palm leaves and brushwood.

The entrance to the house was small and awkward.

Eight families lived in one house. Most of the space was given over to kitchens. One kitchen for every two families, four kitchens in all.

Although “kitchen” is a big word. They were just hollows in the floor where a fire was made. Above the fire hung a wooden shelf where the food was cooked.

The roof over the kitchen is covered in soot.

The bedrooms were to the right and left of the kitchen. The entrance to a bedroom was a simple slit in the wall, with no door or decoration.

Today the bedroom is a storeroom for rags, but I doubt the Batak lived much better. What’s more, you were allowed to sleep in the house only after marriage. If a Batak came of age and didn’t marry, he slept in the barn.

By the way, “Batak” is a name given to the pagan tribes of Sumatra by Indonesian Muslims. The people never called themselves that.

The village headman speaks good English and keeps a visitors’ book. Tourists happily leave money for the upkeep of the village, and in gratitude the headman plays a wedding tune on a pipe.

Lake Toba

After the stop in Lingga, you can drive on to the lake. Tourists usually go to the town of Parapat, but it’s far. If you just want to see the lake, you can drive to its northern shore.

There’s a viewpoint above the lake.

Below you can see the village of Tongging.

There are some Batak houses.

For the locals, a white tourist is a rare sight. They swarm around like flies, ask to take photos, and try to talk.

There’s a waterfall next to the viewpoint.

Lake Toba is famous in narrow circles. It’s the largest volcanic lake on the planet. Once there was a huge volcano here, and 74,000 years ago it erupted with incredible force. The eruption created a caldera — a vast depression filled with water.

Calderas form when a volcano’s crater collapses. Sometimes a volcano erupts so violently that all its underground contents are thrown out. This leaves a void inside, into which the crater collapses. The walls of the crater stay in place. The result is a cauldron that later fills with water.

Sometimes the crater collapses in such a way that an untouched island remains in the middle. That’s what happened at Lake Toba. The lake lies in the crater of a former volcano, and in the middle of the lake is Samosir Island.

Samosir Island can be seen from the viewpoint. You can get to the island by ferry. They say many Batak villages have survived there.