One of the attractions of the Bada Valley is the complete lack of tourist infrastructure and an accompanying lack of literature about the area. I couldn't find any maps or guidebooks covering the Bada Valley – at least, none that I could find for sale in Indonesia – so our plan was to catch a jeep to the village of Bomba at the eastern end of the valley, and to try to track down some information once we got there.
All we discovered in the end was a hand-drawn map painted on the wall of our losmen1, which I copied down as best I could. It looked pretty comprehensive and had most of the major megaliths marked on it, but it turned out to be completely useless. In particular the distances shown on the map were way out, as they put the trek from Bomba to Gimpu at about 75km; it was a lot less than this. We wandered around aimlessly, trying to match the map to reality, and it simply didn't work, so in the end we hired a couple of locals to take us to the vatu molindo, as they call the statues round here. Once out of the valley and guide-free once more, we found the path pretty easy to follow, as we simply stuck to the Sungai Lariang (the Lariang River) for the most part. Here's the route we ended up stumbling through, more by accident than by design:
| Day | Walk |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bomba to Tuare |
| 2 | Tuare to Moa |
| 3 | Moa to Gimpu |
We didn't actually stay in village of Tuare itself, but in a makeshift rainforest camp about half-an-hour's walk past the village. I can't for the life of me remember why we decided to sleep on the rainforest floor rather than in a bed back in the village, but it certainly proved to be an interesting experience. Luckily we found a proper bed in Moa, the next village along, and from there it was a relatively easy walk out to Gimpu, the first village served by public transport.
1 A losmen is an Indonesian hotel.
