Day 7: Dairi to Sibogla - 209km - 13 Hours



Now looking at google maps the road to Sibolga was not the main road which contradicts the picture of the OS Map that we were following. Infact Sibogla doesn't even look like a main city on google maps.



Either way I'm sure the roads were equally as shit.

We set of from the Al Qaeda training camp at about 5.30am before the sun was up and continued down the crater. We had only just left the village when we saw a fellow tuk tuk that looked like it had been ditched in the hedge.

We pulled over and walked towards the tuk tuk. It looked like it had been in an accident the way it had been dumped and all three of us approached it praying that we weren't going to find some dead bodies slouched over the steering wheel.

When we got close it was empty and we saw 2 hammocks suspended between the tree's and a lamp post. We woke the guys up to check they were ok and it turned out that they had driven through the night and only set up camp 2 hours ago.

"Sorry to wake you up guys but glad you are alive!"

And we left them too it.

A bit of Lake Toba in the background.





As the sun started to come up there were hundreds of kids linting the roads on their way to school. They must have to walk miles every morning to school and a lot of them were tooled up with farming equipment.





This little chap was very proud of his mini machete.





The pics don't do justice to the amount of kids there were. In about 15 years when they all grow up there is gonna be a serious population problem up here.



It was bloody freezing up here too and the state of the roads was gradually getting worse. We'd had a flat spare tire since the start of the race so I made an executive decision to stop at the next tire place to get it fixed just in case we had a blow out.



A view looking out of the tire shop. We were noticing a lot more churches here an a lot less mosques.



A rice paddy. We had a little breakdown here but I think it was just over heating. We'd had a good run at full speed for a couple of hours.



We stopped in a small town for some ice cream and met some locals. I think the town might have been Siborong. Whenever we stopped we were always soon surrounded by local people who were interested in the tuk tuk.



On the way out of the town we were pulled over by a police road block.



I can understand now why so many people like getting arrested in Indonesia. From now on I'd be breaking the law a lot more often.



Then we passed one of the forced labour camps or 'schools' that we'd seen all the kids with tools walking to.



We then stopped for lunch in a town called Tarutung. I ran all the red lights and even went the wrong way down a one way street but alas I couldn't get arrested.

We'd had such a good run this day with fast, not so shitty roads that we thought the final push to Sibogla would be an absolute breeze. Plus the map we were following had it down as an 'Orange' Main Highway.

How wrong we were. As soon as we left Tarutung we were straight into a mountain with this 2 lane roads that got worse and worse. The tuk tuk started off well but we were soon back into the routine of breaking down every 10 mins with either overheating or dirt in the fuel lines.

It was a real struggle to the top and the mountain people were less than helpful. At one point we broke down on a serious uphill slope. Pushing it to get it started was near impossible so we gave a group of local onlookers 2 bottles of water to help us push.

We did the universal sign language of pushing and exchanging for water but they just took the water and buggered of back to their seats where they sat back and laughed at us.

Here are some little kids that thought we were idiots.



When we got to the top of the mountain it was time to come down. This was seriously hard going and I had to heel and toe the brake and accelerator to keep the engine running.

The corners were death traps and we we contantly being passed by massive petrol trucks. It was hard to believe it was a main highway. (I don't think it was now I've seen the google map)

When we arrived in Sibolga at about 7pm it felt like we had just crossed the Andes and we spent the next 20 mins high fiving our selfs for our massive achievement. We thought that we had just crossed the main mountain that all the other teams were talking about getting trucked across and we felt pretty unstoppable.

We found out later that we would be wrong again.

In the main town the tuk tuk gave up again so we pushed it around until we found a room for the night.

This is the best we could do.



It was cleaner than the last place but the beds looked like they were taken from the S21 camps.



And a toilet shot for DD.