SIMPLY SUMBA

Tradition reigns on this idyllic Indonesian island. But as high-end hoteliers start to make inroads, protecting local customs feels more important than ever.

- Simon Willis

FOR MILES, the only buildings we saw were traditional bamboo houses, their towering thatch roofs poking up above the trees. It was early September and my F wife, Charlie, and I were driving south from Tambolaka Airport on the Indonesian island of Sumba.

The place was still in the grip of its long dry season. All around us, a landscape of parched, golden grassland was dotted with villages.

Buffalo grazed in the fields. Along the road we passed young men riding bareback on lean, sinewy horses. The rice fields were punctuated with billowing white flags to scare the birds away.

Sumba is only an hour by plane from Bali, but I felt like I'd been taken to a different world. Bali has been one of the most popular holiday islands for decades. Its best beaches are lined with hotels, and many of its roads crowded with traffic. On Sumba, by contrast, the outside world seems hardly to have intruded.

But now the island, which is home to about 800,000 people, is undergoing a slow and delicate metamorphosis. Charlie and I were on our way to Alamayah, a tiny hotel on the southwestern coast that opened in early 2020, promptly closed because of COVID, and relaunched in mid 2022. It is one of three hotels that are beginning to lure a trickle of visitors to this wild corner of the Indonesian archipelago.