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bikes are more likely to get stolen.” Solid advice. Touching down in Medan to the body-shock humidity and inescapable heat, we were greeted by a smiling Ganda, his delivery riders and two very ordinary-looking twist and go Honda Vario scooters. As experienced multi-continental adventure bikers, we felt a bit foolish, but Ganda assured us they were the business for exploring Sumatra. And he was ab-so-lutely right.
Overall, riding in Sumatra is deceptively easy. You simply look where you want to ride, pull full throttle, and go. This applies to left, right, wrong way, right way, across and in-between lanes of any sized road you care to mention, footpaths, shop frontages and expressways. The only inviolable rule is that you sound your horn when overtaking, undertaking, thinking about either of those, turning left or right and when you see a friend. There is a lot of honking on Sumatran roads.
Day one saw us riding the wrong way down a dual carriageway( along with a hundred or so other local scooter riders) towards Berestagi, 1300 metres up in the volcano belt. The ride there can only be described as lunatic. Incredibly old, terribly slow trucks belching diesel fumes laboured up serial hairpins at walking pace. Other, newer, trucks overtook them. On the hairpin bends. Outside the overtaking
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