Sunday, May 22, 2016

The Babe of Sumatera Utara, Indonesia - MOUNT SIBAYAK

Say hi to a girl who had hiked and conquered Mt. Sibayak!


You can read through all of my writings or go directly to http://youtu.be/_9AsshDWD1g

Since this was my first time hiking, I'd prepared quite a lot of things (carrying a heavy backpack for hiking was totally a bad idea). I took 2 big bottles of mineral water (I regret bringing the mineral water. There were stalls selling mineral water in the middle of the road, so why carrying them 3 hours while you could just buy 'em later?), clothes, jackets, gloves, hat, flashlight, hat flashlight, and 3 sets of mats (for camping). Walking alone was tiring already, walking while carrying a lot of things was stupid -.-

My hometown is in Medan, Sumatera Utara, Indonesia. So, the nearest mountain available is Mt Sibayak. The journey from Medan to Sibayak is more or less the same as when you're going to Brastagi. My group went to that hiking site by bus. It took around 3 hours from Medan city to the hiking site.

After arrive hiking site, we're asked to choose the path we're going to take:
1. Through jungle
2. Through paved roads


My team chose the jungle path. In our mind, it's more adventurous!
Picture is from google, we're hiking during the night,. So, no picture is taken while we walked through jungle

We walked around 3 hours, but we couldn't reach the camping site (jungle road was quite confusing and there's no sign found anywhere. They should have put an arrow or whatever sign to help us). It's getting darker, we're hungry, tired, etc yet we still couldn't find any sign of camping site. So, at last, we chose to go back to the start point & had our dinner first.

We had our dinner near this area. This is an area near the starting point.




After having dinner (at 10 p.m!), we decided to took paved roads, and... surprise! It's more tiring than of walking through jungle! The road was not flat, it's steep. That 3 hours walking via paved roads was a total workout.

Starting point! (Picture courtesy from Google)

Picture courtesy to Google
After walking for around 2-3 hours, you'll find stalls there & there's a staircase across the stall. It's when you knew you're closer to the camping site. Only 1.5 hours left to reach the camping site!
Note : Buy everything you need here, no more stalls after this point.


Picture courtesy to Google
The path is getting more extreme!
Picture courtesy to Google

After walking, a little bit of climbing, stumbling, finally you'll find a lot of campers! We reached the camping site at 2 a.m. Still, we couldn't rest directly, needed to build a tent again. 

After 45 minutes, Ta-Da! 5 tents are ready. However, we chose to enjoy watching the zillions of stars first while eating steamed sweet potatoes. The scenery of the stars are absolutely priceless!


At 3 a.m., I slept first. Other campers still decide to sat around bonfire to heat up their body (It's extremely cold! I even wore 2 pieces of jackets).

We're planning to woke up at 4 a.m. and continue our journey to the top of mountain, but sadly we can't. When dawn came, it's starting to rain. There's no point of reaching the top of the Sibayak if it's raining, you can't watch the sunrise.

So, we enjoy the freezing morning by taking pictures & playing cards (?) inside the tent.









We went back to the starting point at 9 a.m., our bus was waiting over there and we're off to hot spring pools. It's a must after hiking, for relaxing the muscles (they said).


When it's time for lunch, we ate BPK (Babi Panggang Karo) - roasted pork. Should try 'em if you go to Brastagi.





After lunch, we headed to Medan directly, but it's not as we wished. We had leakage tire to deal with.







It didn't take to long fortunately. We arrived Medan safely at 6 p.m.

Overall, the journey is tiring. We're like stray kids when we arrived home, but it was totally worth it! The scenery would blow your mind. The trip will make you closer to your friends, too - team work is needed.

This is my trip, when will be yours? ;)




Sincerely,


Adventurous girl.

P.S. This trip was held on 14th-15th November 2016, excuse my laziness that I just posted this in 2016!