Kampung Naga

Kampung Naga sits in a bend of the Ciwulan river below the main road between Garut and Tasikmalaya, reached by a stairway of around four hundred steps down the valley side, and it is a village of a hundred or so houses held to a fixed customary form: buildings raised on stone footings with bamboo walls, palm-fibre or thatch roofs, oriented in the same direction, all of a similar size, with no ceramic tile, no glass windows and no mains electricity, which the community has declined. The number of houses is fixed by custom, so a new household means someone leaves. The village is Muslim and Sundanese, farming the terraces around it, with a sacred forest above the settlement that outsiders may not enter and certain days on which the village is closed to visitors.

What you actually see

• A fixed customary form - bamboo, thatch and stone, all houses alike and aligned.
• No mains electricity - refused by the community, lamps used after dark.
• Four hundred steps down - the stairway from the road into the valley.
• A closed sacred forest - the grove above the village, off limits to outsiders.

When to go

May to September; the village closes to visitors on certain days. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is closed on set customary days - check before travelling. The steps down and back are steep. This is a working village; ask before photographing and follow the guide's rules.

Nearby

Tasikmalaya is east; Garut and Papandayan are west.