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Jambie
The province of Jambi, gifted with the long and mighty river Batang Han which passes through gold-bearing rocks yielding tiny gold granules after heavy rains, is located in West Sumatra. The province comprises a low-land basin of dense jungles, peat and swamps about the size of Switzerland (53,435 sq km). many people still pan for gold here, and the fabled Svarnabhumi (‘Land of Gold’) of the classical Indian texts may have referred to these upriver regions.
The modern provincial capital of Jambi combines the old prewar city, which formerly was the seat of the former Jambi sultanate, with a new administrative center of Telanaipura (The City of Prince Telanai) just to the west. Its total population is more than 300,000.
Being a river port, Jambi has a booming economy with palm oil, timber, plywood, rubber, coffee and tea as its main commodities. It has an interesting blend of old an new lifestyles.
The Batang Hari estuary was originally the site of an ancient port known as Malayu. In the early 7th century, according to Chinese sources, in Jambi there was a ruler with 5,000 troops, and by the late 7th century the trade had developed sufficiently to attract the unwelcome attention of nearby Srivijaya (Palembang). In 686 Malayu was conquered by Srivijaya.
By the early 10th century, a vast complex of Hindu-Buddhist shrines, tanks and canals arose at Muara Jambi, 26 km down stream from the present day capital.
After an Indian attack on Srivijaya in 1025, Malayu reasserted itself for a time, but then came under Javanese domination after 1275. Remnants of the ancient court appear to have moved upriver, to the western highlands, and place names with Buddhist associations are still common in the Kerinci area. The name Malayu itself, according to some theory, means ‘hill people’ (from the south Indian words mala, ‘hill and ur’, ‘people’).
Indian influence is evident also in the name of Jambi’s greatest river. Hari being an avatar of the Indian god Vishnu, Batang in Malay means ‘river’.
In the 16th century, Islam established itself in Jambi. According to the legend, the sultanate was founded by a Turk with the curious Malay title of Paduka Berhala (‘His Excellency the Idol’). His son, Orang Kaya Hitam (The Black Aristocrat), threw off the yoke of Javanese rule just as Dutch traders appeared on the scene, in the early 1600s.
In 1701 Dutch rules established a post at the mouth of the Batang Hari to control the pepper trade, but were driven out in 1734.
Following the treaty of 1833 this post was reoccupied, but not until 1902 was the area placed under direct rule of the Dutch. Military action in the hinterland continued until 1916.
Dutch colonial ethnographer van Eerde noted that he could find no greater cultural contrast in Indonesia between the highly civilized people of Bali with their lavish costumes, elegant dances and elaborate religious ceremonies and the primitive Kubu tribesmen of southern Sumatra, who wandered naked in the jungle, lived in simple huts and foraged for food. However, if Van Eerde had the opportunity to do a more comprehensive comparison with other primitive tribes in Kalimantan or West Irian, not to mention the most civilized Javanese among the Indonesians, most probably he would have gotten a better picture of what he should have seen.
By sheer chance, thanks to the political change in Indonesia, from being colonial zed to being independent, the Kubus and the Balinese actually found themselves living next to one another in a Jambi transmigration settlement houses, plots of farmland and a year’s free supply of food.
The Kubu are southern Sumatra’s indigenous inhabitants. As traditional hunters and gatherers, they have inhabited the lowland tropical forests of Jambi and South Sumatra provinces for centuries, where they survive by gathering an enormous variety of edible forest products, and by hunting wild game deer, lizards, boar, tapirs, honey bears, monkeys, birds and in the past even elephant. The only animal they do not hunt is the tiger. Apart from this, the Kubu eat wild tubers, fruits, leaves, fish, shell fish and smaller animals such as turtles, snakes and rats.
The Kubu use only a long spear to kill their prey. Dogs are used to chase the quarry and exhaust it so that they can kill it with a spear. Bows and arrows, blowpipes and other weapons are unknown to them, but they do make many types of traps and snares to catch small animals.
Until several decades ago, most of southern Sumatra was still covered in virgin jungle. Villages with surrounding agricultural fields were only to be found on the banks of large rivers that meander lazily through the low land swamps, and in the highland valleys. In recent years, the entire landscape has changed dramatically. Logging, mining and plantation agriculture have opened up many lowland areas, while the construction of the Trans Sumatra Highway has brought a flood of migrants from overpopulated Java, Bali and Madura.
Unable to stop the invading farmers, bulldozers and chainsaws around them, the Kubu have managed to adapt their way of life to the deteriorating circumstances.
Against their nature they have adopted agriculture on a limited scale – they clear small plots of forestland for the cultivation of upland rice, corn or root crops. Moreover, these fields attract animals such as deer and pigs, which may be hunted with greater efficiency.
Most Kubu now live in close contact with village farmers without becoming or wanting to become village dwellers them selves. They settle on farmer’s fields where they can hunt freely, and often they work as daily laborers. They also gather and trade forest products like honey, rattan and various types of tree resins.
Their handicrafts basket and fish traps are increasingly in demand. In exchange, the Kubu receive rice, tobacco, salt, hardware (spearheads, axes, bush knives), medicine and cotton loin cloths (which have long ago replaced their old bark cloth ones).
Increasingly, however, the Kubu also request flashlights’, guns, radios and other forest huts bears silent witness to an increasing contact with the out side world. In addition to their familiar husks, shells and bone remains of game there are now found discarded batteries, empty tins, bottles and plastic trash.
A kind of economic symbiosis has developed between the Kubu and the farmers, in spite of the fact that both groups remain socially far apart. The villagers sedentary Muslims with a sense of belonging to a new and developing Indonesia show little respect or sympathy for the half naked, omnivorous, uncivilized Kubu who cling to such an archaic and disorderly way of life.
The Kubu still consciously reject village life. The heavy work in the fields, the restricted freedom of movement and the numerous obligations and duties imposed on villagers in the form of mandatory schooling, development and political activities, and gotong royong (a more modern principle of most Indonesians: ’working together / helping each other,’) are still alien for the Kubu.
They continually resist the pressures and temptations of the outside world that would force them to become settled villagers.
This also explains why the Kubu never accept houses in transmigration settlement areas and why they soon leave resettlement villages built for their development and civilization, by the government or missionary organizations. They prefer the freedom of the forest, living on the margins of civilization as add job laborers in nearby farms.
Only when this possibility is taken from them do they appear more openly in the outside world as beggars in logging camps, at bus terminals or along the roadways. Perhaps one can look upon this as a modified and modernized form of hunting and gathering with money, food and cigarette as its aim. It is a way of life, which the Kubu have not chosen for them selves. What is required is not simply the protection and conservation of their original environment, but a fundamental reconsideration of the fate and future of the Kubu.
The population of Jambi in fact consists of quite a variety of tribes like Malays, Minangkabaus, Arabs, Chinese, Banjarese, Buginese, and Javanese.
A floating population lives on rafts (similar to those at Palembang) over the Batang Hari at Solok Sipin, just west of the city. The traditional wooden houses stand atop high pillars not far from the modem business center.
A new mosque occupies the side of the former Istana the palace of the sultan overlooking the river. A reconstructed Malay “adat” or traditional house, the Mayang Mangurai, has a permanent exhibit of ethnographic materials, including looms. The provincial museum of archaeological artifacts from the Jambi region. There are several bronzes, including an unusual late Cholastyle dipalaksmi temple lamp recovered from the banks of the lower Batang Hari.
The site of the ancient port Malayu, covering over 1,500 ha, with its candi and menapo or brick built temples and canals, is located some 26 km downstream from the modern capital, on the opposite (north) bank. This is the largest archaeological complex in Sumatra, with a small but interesting site museum, accessible by chartered speedboat or waterbus from Jambi. You can take the regular waterbus service to Muara Sabak and Kampung Laut, and then going up the high riverbank to a well marked path leading to the site museum and ruins.
The full extent, of the site and its associated river settlements is not yet known. The restoration of three main structures Candi Tinggi, Candi Gumpung and Candi Kedaton, has been completed.
Among the recoveries at Muara Jambi is an exquisite but headless Prajnaparamita image in East Javanese Singasari style, similar to that in the National Museum in Jakarta, dating from the early 13th century. Exploration, excavation and restoration continue under pressure from expanding agriculture. A battle against time.
Muara Jambi is thought to have been attacked and destroyed in about 1377. According to legend the last ruler of Muara Jambi, Prince Telanai, was fearful of a soothsayer’s prediction that his son would bring disaster to himself and his realm. Consequently, on the birth of a son he put the boy with a letter into a chest, which was thrown into the sea. The chest was washed up in Siam, where the Sumatran prince was adopted by the ruler and brought up at the royal court. Eventually the young prince returned to Jambi with a great Siamese army, killing his father and sacking the city. It is known, if there is any truth to the legend, but Siamese bronze Buddha images have been found in Jambi and a stone Sukhothai Buddha fragment was found during the course of excavation at Muara Jambi.
Much further downstream, at the mouth of the Kuala Niur a southerly branch of the Batang Hari the island of Berhala can be reached by speedboat in about 45 minutes from the village of Nipah Panjang. This tiny island, with its un spoilt white sand beaches, interesting rock formations and simple fishing villages, is reminiscent of the islands of Bangka and Belitung. A 200 m hill dominates the island and has long been used as a navigational landmark by seafarers, it appears on 15th century Chinese sea charts.
With the completion of the middle sections of the Trans Sumatra Highway, including a 210 km feeder road from Muarabungo to the west, and the surfacing of the 260 km oil road from Palembang to the south, the city of Jambi is no longer isolated from the rest of Sumatra. Land access to the north is still difficult, but the recent construction of a bridge over the mighty Batang Hari opens the way for better road links with neighboring Riau, which means that Jambi’s economy will grow even more rapidly over the next decade.
If you have more time, you can head west to the Kerinci Valley via Muarabungo and Bangko, which is a full day’s drive away. The village of Rantau Panjang on the Patang Tabir, 30 km north of Bangko, has a number of traditional houses decorated in tricolor black, white and red motifs. Nearby are a number of early Islamic graves.
Just outside the mosque at the town of Karang Berahi, on the Batang Merangin some 25 km east of Bangko is an Old Malay inscription written on stone in the Tamil Grantha script, which dates from the year 608 of Buddhist calendar, or AD 686. The lower part of the stone is carved into a lip where sacred water from ablutions poured over the stone and were collected and drunk by the assembled chiefs. In Malay fashion they drank the curse, which would kill them, if they broke the oath of allegiance to the Datuk or ruler of Srivijaya. Apparently a practical person, the Datuk backed up the magic of the curse with force of arms.
The beautiful but isolated Kerinci valley in the Bukit Barisan range at the western edge of Jambi province is the highlight of this trip. An active volcano also by the name of Kerinci (3,805 m) over shadowed to the north, is the highest mountain in Sumatra. The name may derive from the Tamil word kurinci, meaning a hilly tract.
The area was once an important source of gold. Megalithic Bronze Age remains have been found here, along with the traces of Buddhist influence and early second millennium imported Chinese ceramics. Village names such as Sanggar Agung may indicate the persistence of Buddhist religious affiliations until fairly recent times. The area was finally subdued by Dutch force of arms in 1903.
Three routes lead into the valley and small town of Sungaipenuh the kabupaten administrative center and focus of the 1.4 million ha Kerinci Seblat National Park. One road links it with Jambi via the narrow valley of the Batang Merangin from Bangko, a second leads north past Mt. Kerinci through the government owned Kayo Aro tea estate into West Sumatra, and a third climbs quickly over the western edge of the Bukit Barisan.
Mt. Kerinci, sometimes also called Mt. Indrapura, dominates the valley to the north and is accessible by 4 wheel drive vehicles. Here too is the 6000 ha state owned Kayu Aro tea estate. A 16 km nature trail running up to the summit with its crater lake can be covered in about an hour and a half.
The village of Pondok Tinggi has a large, ornately decorated timber mosque built in 1874 said to have been constructed without the use of a single iron nail. Here too is an enormous bedug, a horizontally suspended drum used instead of a muezzin to call the faithful to prayer in the old Javanese mosque a practice that dates to pre Islamic Hindu Javanese temples.
Important megalithic remains, accessible along tracks suitable only for 4 wheel drive vehicles, are to be found at several locations. At Desa KUnun, some 6 km south of Sungaipenuh, is a 1.5 m long stone known as Batu Gong. At Desa Muak in Gunung Raya district south office lake, some 30 km south of Sunagaipenuh, is the Batu Bergambar or ‘picture stone’ a stone carved with animal and spiral relief motifs which was moved from its original location to a new site in the village in 1960. Here also is a fallen menhir known as Batu Patah or ‘the broken stone’. At Desa Pondok in the same area, 35 km south of Sungaipenuh, is an other decorated stone with spiral relief’s 3.85 m in length.
Danau Gunung Tujuh is a lake covering some 1,000 hectare near the peak of Mt. Tujuh, about 50 km north of Sungaipenuh. At 1,996 m above sea level it has interesting flora and is said to be the highest Freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. Temperatures at the nearby rest house drop to 7 degrees Celcius during the evening. Further north, on the border of West Sumatra’s Solok Regency, is the 45 m high Teluk Berasap waterfall.
The two horned Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus Sumatrensis), a direct descendant of the prehistoric Wolly Rhinoceros that roamed the world some 40 million years ago is on the edge of extinction.
This pocket rhino is the smallest of the world’s five rhino species and displays an aptly Asian personality being less aggressive than its African counterparts. It is a harmless vegetarian that exhibits a certain charm, the young are known to bleat and squeak like lambs.
A very shy, solitary wanderer, the Sumatran rhino is extremely difficult to observe in the field. At least one researcher was obliged to study it almost entirely through plaster casts of the beast’s footprints.
Only about 800 survive worldwide, 700 of them in Sumatra. For centuries the rhino has been hunted for its horn and other body parts prized in Asian folk medicine. Today it is in demand as a fever tonic in traditional Chinese medicine. The rhino’s unfortunate tendency to follow known trails make it vulnerable to pit trap poaching the hunter simply sits and waits.
One of the major problems facing wildlife conservationists in Indonesia today is the gradual loss of prime habitats due to human pressures on the environment. This problem is particularly evident in Sumatra where human activities such as shifting cultivation, logging, agriculture, transmigration and mining have accelerated the disappearance of the preferred habitats of many animals. Sumatra with its 25 million people is the second most populated island in Indonesia. It is also the target area for the settlement of transmigrates from over crowded Java.
Equally threatening is the steady cutting of the rhino’s lowland forest habitat. This has forced most rhinos into rugged upland areas, despite their need for swampy mud wallows to coat their hides against parasites and dry cracking. Individuals are now too scattered to form viable breeding populations, and the Sumatran rhino’s long term survival is seriously in question.
In 1985 a captive breeding program was launched. Twelve Sumatran rhinos were distributed in zoos throughout Indonesia, England and the United States. The long wait for offspring is on. Sumatran rhino pregnancies occur only every four years, last 16 months and result in a single calf
The modern provincial capital of Jambi combines the old prewar city, which formerly was the seat of the former Jambi sultanate, with a new administrative center of Telanaipura (The City of Prince Telanai) just to the west. Its total population is more than 300,000.
Being a river port, Jambi has a booming economy with palm oil, timber, plywood, rubber, coffee and tea as its main commodities. It has an interesting blend of old an new lifestyles.
The Batang Hari estuary was originally the site of an ancient port known as Malayu. In the early 7th century, according to Chinese sources, in Jambi there was a ruler with 5,000 troops, and by the late 7th century the trade had developed sufficiently to attract the unwelcome attention of nearby Srivijaya (Palembang). In 686 Malayu was conquered by Srivijaya.
By the early 10th century, a vast complex of Hindu-Buddhist shrines, tanks and canals arose at Muara Jambi, 26 km down stream from the present day capital.
After an Indian attack on Srivijaya in 1025, Malayu reasserted itself for a time, but then came under Javanese domination after 1275. Remnants of the ancient court appear to have moved upriver, to the western highlands, and place names with Buddhist associations are still common in the Kerinci area. The name Malayu itself, according to some theory, means ‘hill people’ (from the south Indian words mala, ‘hill and ur’, ‘people’).
Indian influence is evident also in the name of Jambi’s greatest river. Hari being an avatar of the Indian god Vishnu, Batang in Malay means ‘river’.
In the 16th century, Islam established itself in Jambi. According to the legend, the sultanate was founded by a Turk with the curious Malay title of Paduka Berhala (‘His Excellency the Idol’). His son, Orang Kaya Hitam (The Black Aristocrat), threw off the yoke of Javanese rule just as Dutch traders appeared on the scene, in the early 1600s.
In 1701 Dutch rules established a post at the mouth of the Batang Hari to control the pepper trade, but were driven out in 1734.Following the treaty of 1833 this post was reoccupied, but not until 1902 was the area placed under direct rule of the Dutch. Military action in the hinterland continued until 1916.
Dutch colonial ethnographer van Eerde noted that he could find no greater cultural contrast in Indonesia between the highly civilized people of Bali with their lavish costumes, elegant dances and elaborate religious ceremonies and the primitive Kubu tribesmen of southern Sumatra, who wandered naked in the jungle, lived in simple huts and foraged for food. However, if Van Eerde had the opportunity to do a more comprehensive comparison with other primitive tribes in Kalimantan or West Irian, not to mention the most civilized Javanese among the Indonesians, most probably he would have gotten a better picture of what he should have seen.
By sheer chance, thanks to the political change in Indonesia, from being colonial zed to being independent, the Kubus and the Balinese actually found themselves living next to one another in a Jambi transmigration settlement houses, plots of farmland and a year’s free supply of food.
The Kubu are southern Sumatra’s indigenous inhabitants. As traditional hunters and gatherers, they have inhabited the lowland tropical forests of Jambi and South Sumatra provinces for centuries, where they survive by gathering an enormous variety of edible forest products, and by hunting wild game deer, lizards, boar, tapirs, honey bears, monkeys, birds and in the past even elephant. The only animal they do not hunt is the tiger. Apart from this, the Kubu eat wild tubers, fruits, leaves, fish, shell fish and smaller animals such as turtles, snakes and rats.
The Kubu use only a long spear to kill their prey. Dogs are used to chase the quarry and exhaust it so that they can kill it with a spear. Bows and arrows, blowpipes and other weapons are unknown to them, but they do make many types of traps and snares to catch small animals.
Until several decades ago, most of southern Sumatra was still covered in virgin jungle. Villages with surrounding agricultural fields were only to be found on the banks of large rivers that meander lazily through the low land swamps, and in the highland valleys. In recent years, the entire landscape has changed dramatically. Logging, mining and plantation agriculture have opened up many lowland areas, while the construction of the Trans Sumatra Highway has brought a flood of migrants from overpopulated Java, Bali and Madura.
Unable to stop the invading farmers, bulldozers and chainsaws around them, the Kubu have managed to adapt their way of life to the deteriorating circumstances.
Against their nature they have adopted agriculture on a limited scale – they clear small plots of forestland for the cultivation of upland rice, corn or root crops. Moreover, these fields attract animals such as deer and pigs, which may be hunted with greater efficiency.
Most Kubu now live in close contact with village farmers without becoming or wanting to become village dwellers them selves. They settle on farmer’s fields where they can hunt freely, and often they work as daily laborers. They also gather and trade forest products like honey, rattan and various types of tree resins.
Their handicrafts basket and fish traps are increasingly in demand. In exchange, the Kubu receive rice, tobacco, salt, hardware (spearheads, axes, bush knives), medicine and cotton loin cloths (which have long ago replaced their old bark cloth ones).
Increasingly, however, the Kubu also request flashlights’, guns, radios and other forest huts bears silent witness to an increasing contact with the out side world. In addition to their familiar husks, shells and bone remains of game there are now found discarded batteries, empty tins, bottles and plastic trash.
A kind of economic symbiosis has developed between the Kubu and the farmers, in spite of the fact that both groups remain socially far apart. The villagers sedentary Muslims with a sense of belonging to a new and developing Indonesia show little respect or sympathy for the half naked, omnivorous, uncivilized Kubu who cling to such an archaic and disorderly way of life.
The Kubu still consciously reject village life. The heavy work in the fields, the restricted freedom of movement and the numerous obligations and duties imposed on villagers in the form of mandatory schooling, development and political activities, and gotong royong (a more modern principle of most Indonesians: ’working together / helping each other,’) are still alien for the Kubu.
They continually resist the pressures and temptations of the outside world that would force them to become settled villagers.
This also explains why the Kubu never accept houses in transmigration settlement areas and why they soon leave resettlement villages built for their development and civilization, by the government or missionary organizations. They prefer the freedom of the forest, living on the margins of civilization as add job laborers in nearby farms.
Only when this possibility is taken from them do they appear more openly in the outside world as beggars in logging camps, at bus terminals or along the roadways. Perhaps one can look upon this as a modified and modernized form of hunting and gathering with money, food and cigarette as its aim. It is a way of life, which the Kubu have not chosen for them selves. What is required is not simply the protection and conservation of their original environment, but a fundamental reconsideration of the fate and future of the Kubu.
The population of Jambi in fact consists of quite a variety of tribes like Malays, Minangkabaus, Arabs, Chinese, Banjarese, Buginese, and Javanese.
A floating population lives on rafts (similar to those at Palembang) over the Batang Hari at Solok Sipin, just west of the city. The traditional wooden houses stand atop high pillars not far from the modem business center.
A new mosque occupies the side of the former Istana the palace of the sultan overlooking the river. A reconstructed Malay “adat” or traditional house, the Mayang Mangurai, has a permanent exhibit of ethnographic materials, including looms. The provincial museum of archaeological artifacts from the Jambi region. There are several bronzes, including an unusual late Cholastyle dipalaksmi temple lamp recovered from the banks of the lower Batang Hari.
The site of the ancient port Malayu, covering over 1,500 ha, with its candi and menapo or brick built temples and canals, is located some 26 km downstream from the modern capital, on the opposite (north) bank. This is the largest archaeological complex in Sumatra, with a small but interesting site museum, accessible by chartered speedboat or waterbus from Jambi. You can take the regular waterbus service to Muara Sabak and Kampung Laut, and then going up the high riverbank to a well marked path leading to the site museum and ruins.
The full extent, of the site and its associated river settlements is not yet known. The restoration of three main structures Candi Tinggi, Candi Gumpung and Candi Kedaton, has been completed.
Among the recoveries at Muara Jambi is an exquisite but headless Prajnaparamita image in East Javanese Singasari style, similar to that in the National Museum in Jakarta, dating from the early 13th century. Exploration, excavation and restoration continue under pressure from expanding agriculture. A battle against time.
Muara Jambi is thought to have been attacked and destroyed in about 1377. According to legend the last ruler of Muara Jambi, Prince Telanai, was fearful of a soothsayer’s prediction that his son would bring disaster to himself and his realm. Consequently, on the birth of a son he put the boy with a letter into a chest, which was thrown into the sea. The chest was washed up in Siam, where the Sumatran prince was adopted by the ruler and brought up at the royal court. Eventually the young prince returned to Jambi with a great Siamese army, killing his father and sacking the city. It is known, if there is any truth to the legend, but Siamese bronze Buddha images have been found in Jambi and a stone Sukhothai Buddha fragment was found during the course of excavation at Muara Jambi.
Much further downstream, at the mouth of the Kuala Niur a southerly branch of the Batang Hari the island of Berhala can be reached by speedboat in about 45 minutes from the village of Nipah Panjang. This tiny island, with its un spoilt white sand beaches, interesting rock formations and simple fishing villages, is reminiscent of the islands of Bangka and Belitung. A 200 m hill dominates the island and has long been used as a navigational landmark by seafarers, it appears on 15th century Chinese sea charts.
With the completion of the middle sections of the Trans Sumatra Highway, including a 210 km feeder road from Muarabungo to the west, and the surfacing of the 260 km oil road from Palembang to the south, the city of Jambi is no longer isolated from the rest of Sumatra. Land access to the north is still difficult, but the recent construction of a bridge over the mighty Batang Hari opens the way for better road links with neighboring Riau, which means that Jambi’s economy will grow even more rapidly over the next decade.
If you have more time, you can head west to the Kerinci Valley via Muarabungo and Bangko, which is a full day’s drive away. The village of Rantau Panjang on the Patang Tabir, 30 km north of Bangko, has a number of traditional houses decorated in tricolor black, white and red motifs. Nearby are a number of early Islamic graves.
Just outside the mosque at the town of Karang Berahi, on the Batang Merangin some 25 km east of Bangko is an Old Malay inscription written on stone in the Tamil Grantha script, which dates from the year 608 of Buddhist calendar, or AD 686. The lower part of the stone is carved into a lip where sacred water from ablutions poured over the stone and were collected and drunk by the assembled chiefs. In Malay fashion they drank the curse, which would kill them, if they broke the oath of allegiance to the Datuk or ruler of Srivijaya. Apparently a practical person, the Datuk backed up the magic of the curse with force of arms.
The beautiful but isolated Kerinci valley in the Bukit Barisan range at the western edge of Jambi province is the highlight of this trip. An active volcano also by the name of Kerinci (3,805 m) over shadowed to the north, is the highest mountain in Sumatra. The name may derive from the Tamil word kurinci, meaning a hilly tract.
The area was once an important source of gold. Megalithic Bronze Age remains have been found here, along with the traces of Buddhist influence and early second millennium imported Chinese ceramics. Village names such as Sanggar Agung may indicate the persistence of Buddhist religious affiliations until fairly recent times. The area was finally subdued by Dutch force of arms in 1903.
Three routes lead into the valley and small town of Sungaipenuh the kabupaten administrative center and focus of the 1.4 million ha Kerinci Seblat National Park. One road links it with Jambi via the narrow valley of the Batang Merangin from Bangko, a second leads north past Mt. Kerinci through the government owned Kayo Aro tea estate into West Sumatra, and a third climbs quickly over the western edge of the Bukit Barisan.
- jambi To the coast via Tapan, also in West Sumatra
Mt. Kerinci, sometimes also called Mt. Indrapura, dominates the valley to the north and is accessible by 4 wheel drive vehicles. Here too is the 6000 ha state owned Kayu Aro tea estate. A 16 km nature trail running up to the summit with its crater lake can be covered in about an hour and a half.
The village of Pondok Tinggi has a large, ornately decorated timber mosque built in 1874 said to have been constructed without the use of a single iron nail. Here too is an enormous bedug, a horizontally suspended drum used instead of a muezzin to call the faithful to prayer in the old Javanese mosque a practice that dates to pre Islamic Hindu Javanese temples.
Important megalithic remains, accessible along tracks suitable only for 4 wheel drive vehicles, are to be found at several locations. At Desa KUnun, some 6 km south of Sungaipenuh, is a 1.5 m long stone known as Batu Gong. At Desa Muak in Gunung Raya district south office lake, some 30 km south of Sunagaipenuh, is the Batu Bergambar or ‘picture stone’ a stone carved with animal and spiral relief motifs which was moved from its original location to a new site in the village in 1960. Here also is a fallen menhir known as Batu Patah or ‘the broken stone’. At Desa Pondok in the same area, 35 km south of Sungaipenuh, is an other decorated stone with spiral relief’s 3.85 m in length.
Danau Gunung Tujuh is a lake covering some 1,000 hectare near the peak of Mt. Tujuh, about 50 km north of Sungaipenuh. At 1,996 m above sea level it has interesting flora and is said to be the highest Freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. Temperatures at the nearby rest house drop to 7 degrees Celcius during the evening. Further north, on the border of West Sumatra’s Solok Regency, is the 45 m high Teluk Berasap waterfall.
The two horned Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus Sumatrensis), a direct descendant of the prehistoric Wolly Rhinoceros that roamed the world some 40 million years ago is on the edge of extinction.
This pocket rhino is the smallest of the world’s five rhino species and displays an aptly Asian personality being less aggressive than its African counterparts. It is a harmless vegetarian that exhibits a certain charm, the young are known to bleat and squeak like lambs.
A very shy, solitary wanderer, the Sumatran rhino is extremely difficult to observe in the field. At least one researcher was obliged to study it almost entirely through plaster casts of the beast’s footprints.
Only about 800 survive worldwide, 700 of them in Sumatra. For centuries the rhino has been hunted for its horn and other body parts prized in Asian folk medicine. Today it is in demand as a fever tonic in traditional Chinese medicine. The rhino’s unfortunate tendency to follow known trails make it vulnerable to pit trap poaching the hunter simply sits and waits.
One of the major problems facing wildlife conservationists in Indonesia today is the gradual loss of prime habitats due to human pressures on the environment. This problem is particularly evident in Sumatra where human activities such as shifting cultivation, logging, agriculture, transmigration and mining have accelerated the disappearance of the preferred habitats of many animals. Sumatra with its 25 million people is the second most populated island in Indonesia. It is also the target area for the settlement of transmigrates from over crowded Java.
Equally threatening is the steady cutting of the rhino’s lowland forest habitat. This has forced most rhinos into rugged upland areas, despite their need for swampy mud wallows to coat their hides against parasites and dry cracking. Individuals are now too scattered to form viable breeding populations, and the Sumatran rhino’s long term survival is seriously in question.
In 1985 a captive breeding program was launched. Twelve Sumatran rhinos were distributed in zoos throughout Indonesia, England and the United States. The long wait for offspring is on. Sumatran rhino pregnancies occur only every four years, last 16 months and result in a single calf