Bus Travel on the Trans-Sumatran Highway

The journey from Pulau Samosir, North Sumatra to Bukittingi, West Sumatra is only about 350km as the crow flies, so you'd expect a journey between these two areas along a road called the Trans-Sumatran Highway would be rather short. Wrong.

The journey is 15hrs on a coach that winds around the countryside non-stop. Because the road is so narrow and the corners mostly blind, the bus must constantly sound its horn. These two factors combined mean that sleep on this overnight journey is almost impossible and it can only really be termed as my friend Weiger said, "a hell".

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• bus
• pulau
• samosir
• danau
• toba
• bukittinggi
• north
• west
• sumatra
• indonesia
• sumatera

[gydur1]

I went from Bukittingi to Lake Toba in 2008...the bus had a flat tire FIVE times on that same trip hahahahaha...and everybody in the bus were smoking like maniacs.

West Sumatra is cool!

[solaroven]

@gydur1 It's a nightmarish journey! Wouldn't mind doing it again sometime. :)

[andresihotang]

@Foufouvideos Hi man... Thank you for visiting my province, North Sumatra. However, according to 0:00 - 0:02 which we can see a traditional house with silver curved structure roof...it is West Sumatra traditional house, called Rumah Gadang. So I can comfortably said that the location of this video is in West Sumatra.

Sidamanik is located in North Sumatra, can be accessed on the way from Medan before reaching Toba Lake..

[Foufouvideos]

Heyyyy!!!!!

I was there in August of 2009!

Is that Sidamanik?

Greetz from Luxembourg ( Europe )

[ux2xbxe]

what bus armada did you take? if you take ALS, there wont be any highway anymore, only hellway... they're sure drive the bus like an F1 (large version, though) :D

[Neztle]

highway???

that a HA..HA..HA..HA..HA..haighway

[utamitamoto]

very nice ! i have been there out of touristic season and i travelled with 2 canadians girls in a big bus for only 3 passengers from bukitingi to manijau lake ...

i remember we stoped because of a noisy wheel 200 meters after we lived the bus station and after 2 hours the engine was missing oil ... but nice journey !

[benthead]

This truly is a grueling trip. I traveled half the length of Sumatra with a man sitting on my lap. Worst road trip I've ever had. It had to be the most

scenic though - Beautiful rainforest

[CoolioMasta]

Hahaha. Yeah, they're not exactly "highways". I got sick during my trip there, the constant winding of the road is unbearable for my head.