Trans-Flores Highway

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Labuan Bajo

   Labuan Bajo was a sleepy fishing village not so long ago, and it is still trying to catch up with its own fame. It sits at the western tip of Flores, in eastern Indonesia, facing a scatter of dry brown islands that rise from a bright blue sea, and it is the gateway to Komodo National Park, a UNESCO site since 1991, home of the Komodo dragon. The largest living lizard on earth, which can grow to about three metres, survives in the wild only on a few islands here, and boat trips from the harbour take visitors to see them on Komodo and Rinca.

   Read the complete Labuan Bajo write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Trans-Flores Highway point 1 sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Trans-Flores Highway point 2.

2. 2. Ruteng

   Ruteng sits on a cool plateau in the middle of Flores, about twelve hundred metres above the sea, in country that feels more like the Alps in a heat wave than the tropics. Mornings here are cold enough for a jacket, mist hangs over the rice fields, and the hills are green with coffee, vanilla and clove plantations. About thirty-five thousand people live in the town, the main centre of the Manggarai region, and the majority are Catholic, a legacy of Portuguese traders and later Dutch missionaries that makes Flores unusual in mostly Muslim Indonesia. The cathedral is a large and busy landmark.

   Read the complete Ruteng write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Trans-Flores Highway point 2 comes up 71 km in. Next is Trans-Flores Highway point 3.

3. 3. Bajawa

   Bajawa is a cool highland town in the middle of Flores, and the first thing the body notices is the temperature. You arrive from the sticky coast and climb to around eleven hundred metres, where evenings need a jacket and the air smells of woodsmoke and clove. The town sits in a bowl at the foot of Mount Inerie, a graceful volcano of over two thousand metres whose cone dominates the southern skyline, and its slopes are covered in coffee, vegetables and clove trees. This is the heartland of the Ngada people, whose villages of thatched houses, ancestral shrines and megalithic stones lie within an hour or two of the town.

   Read the complete Bajawa write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   142 km in you reach Trans-Flores Highway point 3. Next is Trans-Flores Highway point 4.

4. 4. Ende

   Ende sits on the south coast of Flores, a long, volcanic island in eastern Indonesia, and it is a place where history has left a small, quiet mark. In 1934 the Dutch colonial government exiled the nationalist leader Sukarno here, and he lived in a modest house for four years, writing, staging plays and thinking. According to local tradition, he came to the idea of the Pancasila, the five principles that became the foundation of the Indonesian state, while sitting under a breadfruit tree on the seafront, and the spot is now a small memorial park.

   Read the complete Ende write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Trans-Flores Highway point 4, about halfway. Next is Trans-Flores Highway point 5.

5. 5. Near Wolowaru

   Wolowaru is a market town in the mountains of central Flores, strung out along the Trans-Flores Highway east of Kelimutu, and on market day the road through it fills with trucks, bemos and people in hand-woven sarongs carrying sacks of rice, coffee and vegetables. It is not a place most travellers stop for long, but it is a good one to pause in: a slice of ordinary life on an island where tourism has only touched a few spots.

   Read the complete Near Wolowaru write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Trans-Flores Highway point 5 sits at 285 km, late in the day. Next is Trans-Flores Highway point 6.

6. 6. Larantuka

   Planning note

   Trans-Flores Highway point 6 comes up 666 km in.