Dear steemians

This is my first travel story. I was inspired by newly established tag #travelfeed operated by @travelfeed.
Today is my 51st day on Steemit and I had enjoyed every one of them. Learned so many new things, connect with so many people and been able to share my passion – photography. I also have now more than 250 followers which is an amazing accomplishment for me and I am honored with every one of you. Thank you for supporting my work!

I hope you are having wonderful Tuesday. This day is time for Asia regarding to colleagues from @travelfeed.
I haven’t seen a lot of Asia yet, but still enough for story or two.
So today I will share my experience of first two days of my travel to Indonesia. I spend those two days in Bukit Lawang, northern part of Sumatra.

I arrived in Indonesia on 11th of September 2017 in late evening. The chauffer was waiting for us at the airport and take us to Grand Swiss Bel Hotel just to overnight.
Early in the morning we headed on about 90 kilometers long drive. In Europe that would mean less than an hour drive, but Indonesia is something else… I read a lot of articles about their driving habits before I went there but I was still totally surprised. If I would drive myself I would probably still be in Medan. They are driving like crazy if you comparing them with where I live. There is a normal two way road and they somehow manage to put 2 trucks on each lane and without reducing speed they can cross. Everything there is on centimeter close.
So that was my first experience with it and I am glad that I am alive.

Traffic in Medan

Getting close to rainforest

We finally get to first destination after a few hour drive. When we exits from the car driver told us, that this is the end of the road and that we have to walk on hilly path for about half an hour. That would be fine if we wouldn’t have our entire luggage with us. Of course locals always have a solution and this time was no different. He called few of young local guys and they helped us with the luggage.
The path itself was very interesting and so walk on the edge of tropical rainforest was very pleasant even though it was very hot and humid.

Bridge to Bukit Lawang

Path to our hotel

We have stayed at the best hotel in “town”. At least what reviews at Tripadvisor (NOTE: from 218 reviews they have 217 excellent and 1 very good – beat that if you can!) says and Booking.com grade EcoTravel Cottages Bukit Lawang is the best in “town”. And we can defiantly agree. It was an amazing experience that there is even anything that far in nowhere. Cleanliness of the hotel was excellent, room was comfortable, but what really impressed was location and breakfast. So start of our accommodations in Indonesia couldn’t be better!

Eco Travel Cottages Bukit Lawang front side

Amazing location by the river

Dream breakfast ambiance

Romantic room

A bit after midday tour guide came to pick us up and we were ready to go on trekking to the Gunung Leuser National Park. Highlight of this trip to tropical rainforest is defiantly that you see orangutans in their natural habitat. That is one of a kind experience. I love monkeys; they are my favorite animals so that was just something for me! There is also an amazing flora and fauna overall. There is always something happening in it. You are following your guide who is paves the way and listening to all this sound and stops when your guide is searching for tracks of monkeys; simply stunning.
As we had such a good time searching for monkeys we decided to do it one more time next morning and we were not disappointed.

There are also few facts of Gunung Leuser National Park:

• The Gunung Leuser National Park is one of the richest tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia.
• It is covering up to 7927 square kilometers.
• It is one of the last places on earth, where you can see the critically endangered orangutans in the wild.
• This region is also a host of other wildlife. Elephants, rhinos, tigers, leopard cats, siamangs, Thomas leaf monkeys, macaques, gibbons are just a handful of the thousands of species found in this unique eco-system.
• Together with Bukit Barisan Selatan and Kerinci Seblat National Parks, it is a Unesco World Heritage Site (since 2004), a Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra.
• The park area reaches up to 3,404m to the peak of Gunung Leuser which gave the area its name and protects a wide range of eco-systems. There are river systems, volcanoes and lakes.
• his rainforest is immensely biodiverse, hosting approximately 700 different species of animals - more than 175 mammals, 320 birds, 190 reptiles and amphibians.
• The flora contains approximately 10.000 plant species.
  (Source: Sumatra-EcoTravel)

That was the end of first part of our travel in Sumatra. It was a superb start of our travel and we were looking forward to what was following.
Thank you for your time to read my first ever travel story. I hope you like it. All comments and critics are very welcomed.

All photos in my posts are @originalworks and were taken with my own equipment.