Island Hopping through Nusa Tenggara
Part One: Sumbawa
Sumbawa is certainly off the "tourist trail", but it is well-known to surfers. Not being a surfer myself, I can'treally offer any good insights into this side of Sumbawa, but there is plenty of information about surfing in Sumbawa available online. I do know that several high-speed boat operators offer multi-day "beach-hopping" excursions to Sumbawa.
1 -
Sumbawa Besar
The first stop on our journey was the city of 
Sumbawa Besar, the largest settlement on the western side of the island of Sumbawa. Sumbawa is a large island - 300 kilometres across - and is made up of two distinct ethnic groups of people, speaking a different language. The Tua Samawa people inhabit the west of the island, and the Dou Mbojo inhabit the east. Sumbawa Besar is the regional capital of the western side of the island. In the nearby village of Seketeng stands the sandalwood Dalam Loka palace built for Sultan Jalaludin III (1883-1931).
While in this part of Sumbawa, we were fortunate to enjoy the spectacle of water 
buffalo racing, which is a popular sport in many parts of Indonesia (indeed, in many other parts of South East Asia). It was enthralling to see the daredevil "jockeys" standing precariously upon a tiny wooden plank as pairs of buffalo dragged them through the muddy rice paddies at high speed under the late afternoon sun. Getting the animals to stop at the end of the race required a whole team of people, and they sometimes burst through the makeshift barriers to meet the spectators more intimately. The races are taken seriously by the contestants, and prizes for major competitions can be handsome.
We set sail once again in the evening for the overnight journey to Bima on the eastern side of Sumbawa. The sea is full of fishing vessels and prahus with sails made of rice bags.
2 - Bima
We sailed along the northern coast of 
Sumbawa to reach Bima, going ashore to visit one of the villages of the Dou Donggo people, perched high up on the highlands of Gunung Soromandi mountain. The Dou Donggu fled to the highlands in the 17th century to escape Islamisation, and have miraculously managed to retain their original customs and traditions to this day, without influence from the many invading ideologies that successively swept across Indonesia over the centuries. They practise their own animist religion - 'Marafu', which is related to practises found in pockets on the island of Sumba.
The Dou Donggo people have a unique justice system which as been the subject of many books and studies.
The houses of the Dou Donggo people are interesting in appearance, being covered with what can 
best be described as thatch 'tiles' - large sections of thatching lashed together, and then placed like roof tiles on each stilted house. The houses are built upon stilts, and beneath the interior part of the house is a platform for daytime activities. Animals or poultry are kept below the platform. The principal reason for building houses on stilts in this way is to combat termites, which are ever present in this region, much as they are in northern Australia. The posts on which they stand are footed and the surrounding area kept well swept to minimise the impact of these voracious insects.
Across the bay from the Donggo villages, the regional captial of Bima is the larger of island's two main towns. 
A dusty place, Bima has a kind of "wild west" feeling, especially with the abundance of horse-drawn taxis. Though a bustling place, it retains the feel of a rural town, which of course is precisely what it is. Many vistors come at least briefly to Bima because of its close proximity to Komodo Island, the land of the great dragon-lizards.
We visited the Sultan's Palace, which is today a museum and were entertained by a dance troupe performing a complex story which I'm afraid has long since escaped me. Certainly a battle reenactment was involved, as it included a considerable amount of well-coreographed stick and sword fights. The palace in Bima is more recently constructed (1923) than the wooden palace in Sumbawa Besar, and was converted to a museum in the mid 70's. Regrettably, it's not terribly interesting as far as museums go.
Port Padas of Bima is a busy one, with numerous ships in various states of disrepair loading and unloading goods such as vegetables, dried fish, dried seaweed and other aromatic delights. One can also see some wondeful timber sailing ships in port, which gives one a hint of what ports around the world might have looked like a century ago (on a smaller scale of course).
On the subject of fruits and vegetables, it is well worth visiting the central markets in Bima, and doing some people watching. If you're travelling from further west in Indonesia , you will quickly see that a change in appearance of the people has occured since you crossed the Lombok Strait. Every now and then, a vague Melanesian influence can be seen - something that becomes increasingly evident as you journey further east into Nusa Tenggara.
