What's it like to visit the Batak homeland?

Well, here's a decent account. It was written for the New York Times almost 25 years ago but it is still quite relevant. (Ignore the author's comment about the Pastor beating a drum to ward off devils. That's the only clunker in an otherwise well-written piece).

Sad to say, actually, that the number of visitors (i.e., tourists) to the Batak highlands dropped radically after the 1998 economic crisis and fall of the dictator Soeharto. Lake Toba used to attract many bus loads of tourists, mainly from western Europe. Today, Lake Toba is visited mainly by young backpacker tourists. If you want to see some of their accounts of travels to Lake Toba today, click here.