Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine January 2020 | Page 78

Travel / Bukittinggi
/ ON THE MAP
Bukittinggi is the third largest city in West Sumatra. The former
capital of Indonesia during the Emergency Government of the
Republic of Indonesia, the city is located on Bukit Barisan
Mountains, around 90km from Padang City. Situated on the
edge of Ngarai Sianok Canyon, Bukittinggi is surrounded by
Singgalang and Marapi Mountains.
Bukittinggi is a blissful city.
The capital of Indonesia for
a brief period in the 1940s
during the country’s fight
for independence, it feels
refreshingly cool to me,
accustomed as I am to the heat
of the coastal city where I live.
Every morning, Bukittinggi is covered in
a mist that partially hides the surrounding Barisan
Mountains and its steep valleys. Children walk
slowly past the shops, where the doors are still
closed, on their way to school. People venture
outside their homes dressed in thick clothes, and
groups of old men sit at street-side stalls with
sarongs slung around their necks, like Europeans
wearing shawls to keep out the snowflakes. But,
of course, there is no snow in this city of almost
120,000 people, encased by tropical mountains.
I walk along the narrow city streets in the cool
morning air, then sit alone on a garden bench at the
edge of Sianok Canyon. In front of me is a green
valley – vast, meandering and silent. A river flows
along its middle. I feel like I have entered a work
by Wakidi, an Indonesian naturalist painter from
the Mooi Indie era of the late 19 th and early 20 th
centuries, who was enchanted by this place. While
Bukittinggi today is, of course, much changed as
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1
 Mount Singgalang and Mount Marapi
show their form in the light of the morning
sun. At the feet and on the lower slopes,
small villages are still concealed by mist.