Being in West Papua and not experiencing a direct contact with local people or tribes living in the remote villages somewhere in the jungle or mountains would mean not being there at all .. we were anticipating this for a long time and our dream finally came true: we managed to reach Papuan villages and meet local people. We did it without a guide, porters and without a non-essential travel permit, thanks to which we saved about 400-500EUR! We followed the trail through the picturesque mountainous Baliem Valley starting our trekking in Kurima heading to Hitugi, and continuing to Userem, Yuarima until we reached Yogosem, a village situated at an altitude of 2500m above the sea level. This would not be possible without learning the basics of Bahasia Indonesia (without learning the language you cannot communicate with local people and will not get to know their culture well), plus our determination and stamina turned out to be be paramount in that experience too 🙂 (the most strenuous trekking path from Yuarima to Yogosem took us about 3.5 hours and all the time we were to trek the steep trail up, and at the end of it we literally had the opportunity to stand in the clouds :)). We didn’t meet any white people on the way during our 4 day trekking and in fact we felt ourselves to be the main attraction for the locals, especially in Yogosem. In this post you will be provided with more details regarding our 4-day adventure including the info how we got to Kurima, and where we slept and ate with locals for 7-8 EUR per day per person! 🙂
