After weeks of research and planning, I finally
decided to travel to Wae Rebo Traditional Village which appeared to be not too far from Bali but yes, it required a relatively great amount of effort to reach the village.

It took about 1.5 hours to fly from Bali and I arrived at the place that used to be known as a small fishing village before recently having been transformed into the busy bustling epicentre of tourism in Flores of Labuan Bajo. After having a nice lunch, I made my way to Denge village, which is approximately 4.5 hours drive from Labuan Bajo and stayed one night at a home-stay type of accommodation before continuing my journey.

The only way to go to Wae Rebo Traditional
Village is by roughly 4.5 hours of trekking. As I arrived at the Wae Rebo Traditional Village, there was instantly just something very charming about the place and I found myself astounded by the way the village is set up. The humble people of the Manggarai tribe performed a welcome ritual, in which they used a live chicken as a symbol that they welcomed me as their guest in the village.

Wae Rebo is in a remote and untouched area located in the Manggarai regency of Nusa Tenggara Timur Province. The village has only 7 traditional ethnic conical shaped houses constructed from materials from the nearby jungle. Each house has five floors andaccommodates 6 – 8 families. They live peacefully with a very simple and basic life and just by looking at the way they communicate between each other; I know that they are living in harmony. Located about 1,000 metres above sea level and between mountains, the weather in this place is quite cold. There is no electricity so
everything is done manually and of course, there is no TV.

The men in this village are mostly farmers; they grow their own rice, yams, corn and coffee. The kitchen utilises basic cooking tools, certainly nothing fancy but what fascinated me is that they do it with such joy; that’s what we call cooking with love.

Surprisingly in this era, I could still watch people who have been able to live according to their customs and culture as well as maintaining the tradition heritage from their ancestors. Even though there are quite a large number of international tourists coming to Wae Rebo, their life remains the same, seemingly untouched by modernity and they look so happy with the way they’ve been living.

I left the village with a feeling of happiness having witnessed one of the Indonesian cultural heritages
and having had the chance to share precious time with the Manggarai tribe. It is certainly one of the best holidays in my life and certainly made me more
appreciative of my own life.

By Delly Kirana