Berastagi

Berastagi sits at around thirteen hundred metres in the Karo highlands between Sibayak and Sinabung, cool enough that the Dutch developed it as a hill station and productive enough that its market is the reason most Indonesians know the name - passion fruit, oranges, avocados, cabbages and flowers piled along the main street. The Karo Batak are the people of these highlands, and their distinctive architecture survives in villages nearby: Lingga and Dokan have traditional houses on posts with steep gabled roofs and carved buffalo-horn finials, built for several families, though numbers have fallen sharply. Karo tombs are elaborate and often surprisingly modern in style. Sinabung, dormant for centuries, began erupting in 2010 and has killed and displaced people repeatedly, with villages abandoned in the exclusion zone.

What you actually see

• A highland fruit market - passion fruit, oranges and flowers along the main street.
• Karo traditional houses - multi-family buildings at Lingga and Dokan with horn finials.
• Two volcanoes - climbable Sibayak and dangerous Sinabung.
• Elaborate Karo tombs - the distinctive burial architecture around the villages.

When to go

All year; drier May to September. Two days.

Honest expectations

Sinabung's exclusion zone is real and enforced - do not enter abandoned villages. Traditional houses are decaying and few remain. The road from Medan is slow and congested.

Nearby

Sibayak is above the town; Lake Toba and Sipiso-piso are south.