Is Sumba going off...?
The Indo island feels well and truly on the up. And NIHI is - for now - still the GOAT
I was on Sumba last week to visit a friend on his farm. It has been a while since I rusticated in Southeast Asia. Not rusticating like Oh, look at all the stars or Gosh it’s quiet out there. Rusticating like getting up at three in the morning to have a wee in your outdoor bathroom and having a tree frog the size of your hand jump ONTO YOUR FACE, then repairing back to your bed to listen to a pair of nearly foot-long grandfather geckos courting in the rafters right above your mosquito net.
But mostly it was delightful rusticating: papaya growing everywhere, close enough to reach out and pick one from your window; huge stretches of beach frequented only by local villagers; buffalo and goats and hardy little Sumbanese horses running where they like, which was sometimes alongside your Jeep; an entire cross-island highway without a streetlight or a cash point. And yes, a sky sagging with stars, and nights soundtracked with the rhythmic thump of the Indian Ocean connecting to land, the rustle of the wind in banana trees, and nothing else. (Well; horny geckos, maybe.)
My friend’s 150-hectare property is on the southwest coast, a parcel of land endowed with several wild beaches that serve real Crusoe energy and rolling brown-green hills for days. This friend is astonishingly enterprising, and has big plans for his land, in the form of various residences and super-stylish accommodations and farm stays and permutations of communal living. And they’re going to be pretty cool when they eventuate (think: starting in late spring-summer 2027). I’m not at liberty to say more, but it will be good, because everything this guy does is.
The last time I was on Sumba was in 2023. Even then, not so long ago at all, the only signage you saw by the luggage belt at the airport was for Nihi, James McBride’s and Chris Burch’s smothered-in-awards resort (about which a lot more shortly. Last week, in marked contrast, there were half a dozen porters collecting bags for at least 150 passengers disgorged from flights that had landed in quick succession (Nam Air and Batik Air now run two each daily from Denpasar). Cap Karoso opened right around that visit; the boutique likes of Alamayah (just six suites), The Sanubari (all villas) and Lelewatu (a mix of suites and villas, just down the beach from Nihi) have all since come online.