Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine March 2015 | Page 126

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Travel | Saumlaki

A horseman rides along a deserted
Yamdena beach.
The sleepy backwater town of Larat
(on Larat Island) is a colourful and friendly place.
A Yamdena woman carrying the traditional
bakul basket that is used by rural workers
on Yamdena Island.
The Larat islanders are said to be a tough
group, but friendly locals greet visitors with
a genuine island friendliness.

The beach at Sangliat
Dol is perhaps the most
beautiful village beach
on Yamdena.

above the sea on the jungle-clad
clifftop as if washed up high and dry
like some ancient ark.
“Nobody knows how old it is or who built it,”
Pak Herman said. “It’s a complete mystery,
but it’s believed to be at least 500 years old.”
Perhaps it was built as part of some ancient
sea-faring cult or to celebrate the arrival of
the island’s first settlers, who must have
thought that they had stumbled upon some
jungle paradise. There is a belief in the village
that their ancestors came originally from

Bali, about 2,000km west from here,
but nobody seems to know for sure.
As I chatted to Pak Herman and his friends,
I learned about a more unfortunate mystery
surrounding the stone boat.
“There used to be a great curving pillar
standing upright from the stern,” one old
man explained. “Then one morning – about
ten years ago – we woke up and it had
just disappeared.”
It seems that nothing was heard by anyone
in the wooden houses surrounding the
square. There are only two cars in the entire
village so the sound of an engine or shining
lamps would certainly have been noticed.
Likewise any motorboat would have been
heard by the inhabitants of the fishing huts
down by the beach. The only way it could
have been moved silently would be with
a canoe. It would have taken at least
six men to carry the bulky 1.5m-high stone,
and as Pak Herman led me down the 109
uneven stone steps to the beach I tried to

imagine the almost impossible task of
carrying such a weight in the dark with no
torches. There were no clues as to what had
happened but, as far as the people of the
village were concerned, the ancient stone had
simply disappeared off the face of the earth.
The beach at Sangliat Dol is perhaps the
most beautiful village beach on Yamdena.
The villagers regularly clean their beach and
it is devoid of much of the trash that seems
to gather on the waterfront in other more
popular tourist beaches. It is a sparkling
curve of white sand, prettily overshadowed
by curving palms and washed by crystal-clear
waters from a sparkling reef.
Pak Herman suggested that I should go with
him to pay my respects to the kepala desa
(village head). After that we went to meet
the kepala tanah, the spiritual leader of the
village. At only 34 years old Stenley Masriat
seemed young for a traditional shaman, but
his forefathers had been kepala tanah
of Sangliat Dol for longer t