On Foot to Tana Toraja, Sulawesi’s Traditional Heartland

Like Toraja, Mamasa is mountainous. But while Toraja is now well connected to the outside world, Mamasa remains spectacularly remote. There are no air links, and the 100-kilometre journey up from the main coastal highway took five hours along a narrow, potholed road.

Mamasa Town is a small place with a bustling market beside a shining river. I spent a night there, before shouldering my backpack, and setting out, along the track to Toraja.

Mamasa shares many cultural links with its more famous counterpart across the mountains. Most people adopted Christianity during the last century, but pre-Christian traditions are strong, especially in the rites that accompany funerals. As I plodded along the track, I passed open pastures where horses and slate-blue buffalo grazed, and village houses of elaborately carved wood, painted in interlocking patterns of black, red and gold. These houses are known in Mamasa as banua sura.

The trail led into rising forest, and I sweated uphill to reach a high pass, topped with a cluster of banua sura. Behind me I could see the long, mist-cut sweep of the Mamasa Valley; ahead, hidden behind ranks of interlocking ridges, lay my destination – the Toraja heartlands.

It was all downhill to Ibu Maria’s house in Timbaan. This kindly, middle-aged lady keeps a few rooms in her home free for any trekkers who pass. For a modest fee I slept on a lumpy mattress, and dined on rice, stewed vegetables and fried river fish. Ibu Maria even managed to dig out a dusty bottle of Bintang beer from a cupboard. There was no electricity and no fridge, but the cool mountain air had chilled the beer perfectly.

The following days led me through more beautiful landscapes. Villages of wooden houses stood beside bubbling streams and mist smoked over pine-covered hillsides. Gangs of village children chased after me, begging to have their photos taken. The route was easy to find, running along an unsurfaced track above a swift-flowing river, and there was no need for a map. On the second night I slept in a family home in another peaceful mountain village. I had now reached the fringes of Tana Toraja. The houses here had enormous, soaring roofs, and were decorated with buffalo horns. The third day’s walking took me over another high pass and down to Bittuang where I shambled, a little footsore, onto a surfaced road and caught a bus along green valleys to the heart of Tana Toraja.

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