ABSTRACT
During the fourteen-hour journey from Lake Toba to Bukittinggi there had been plenty of time for me to sample the delights of Sumatran roads and Sumatran drivers once again. This time we had come the easy way, on a tourist bus which had to stop only twice for repairs and with a driver who was less mad than some. Even so, by the time I arrived I felt as if I had come from one end of Sumatra to the other. In fact I had traversed only a third of the island – to those lands in the west of Sumatra where for centuries the Minangkabau people have made their home.
