Valley of Limapuluh Kota

Valley of Limapuluh Kota

After leaving the province of Riau, our journey takes us through the broad and fertile valley known as Limapuluh Kota ("Fifty Fortified Villages"). The valley is intensively cultivated, offering some breathtaking panoramas of shimmering rice fields in a scenery of hazy volcanoes at a distance.

Valley of Limapuluh Kota

Limapuluh Kota is the most fertile of the three valleys comprising the Minang highlands. The scenery is dominated by fertile rice fields or sawa's, worked by the Minangkabau farmers. In 1818, Thomas Stamford Raffles visited the highlands as one of the first European travelers entering the region. He reported: "As far as the eye could distinctly trace was one continued scene of cultivation, interspersed with innumerable towns and villages, shaded by the coconut and other fruit trees. I may safely say that this view equaled anything I ever saw in Java. The scenery is more majestic and grand, the population equally dense, and the cultivation equally rich."

Coming from the province of Riau, just after leaving behind the mountains of the Bukit Barisan range, we reach the Harau Canyon, one of Limapuluh Kota's most famous attractions. The canyon is a broad geological cleft surrounded by 100 m high granite walls. It is quite impressive to experience how the cliffs enclose you when entering the canyon. There are some waterfalls which can be visited, although due to illegal logging in the lush nature reserve surrounding the canyon, the waterfalls may be dried-up in the dry season. An observatory point near one of the waterfalls gives a wide view over the canyon.

One of the waterfalls of the Harau Canyon

	The main town of Limapuluh Kota is Payakumbuh. Around this city, numerous megaliths can be found, scattered throughout the region. These stones, mysteriously arranged and carved by unknown prehistoric people, suggest that Limapuluh Kota may have been the place where the first ancestors of the Minangkabau lived.
	City centre of Payakumbuh

In the village of Guguk, 13 km north of Payakumbuh, some of these stones are collected and neatly arranged in front of the old balai adat or village council house. Another site nearby is in the village of Balabus. Here, a small park is established at the location where some megaliths have been erected. In the park, a small museum is built, showing among others some excavated artifacts and photo's of excavations at Mahat, a valley more to the northwest where thousands of megaliths have been found.
Left: Megaliths scattered around in the Payakumbuh area Right: Megaliths in front of Balai Adat of Guguk