Lake Toba Indonesia Tour And Travel | Travel information

Name        : Lake Toba
Location   : Indonesia
Country    : Indonesia
This location is very beautiful and stunning highly inappropriate for a family vacation who want to travel. This location is ideal and will never regret after the visit.
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Lake Toba, the largest lake in South East Asia, and the deepest in the world, was formed 75,000 years ago after an earth splitting volcano eruption. It is the largest and deepest volcanic crater lake in the world. It's 906 meters above sea level with an average depth of 450m. The lake has an island in the middle called Samosir. You can get to Lake Toba from Medan in around 3 - 4 hours.

Lake Toba is in the centre of the homeland to the Batak people but 'Tano Batak' covers an area the size of Belgium within North Sumatra. With their own language, the Batak are mainly Christian, encountering Christian missionaries in the 1850's and 1860's from Holland and Germany.

The current estimated population of Samosir is 120,000. Including Lake Toba there are six major Batak regions - Toba Batak, Karo Batak, Kakpak/Dairi Batak, Simeulungun Batak, Angkola Batak and Sipirko Batak. Around 1.5 Million Batak live amongst these regions. The Karo Batak and centered around Berastagi.

There is a regular ferry service, every half hour, between Tuk-Tuk on Samosir Island to Parapat. The ferry runs between 7.30am and 7.30pm during peak tourist seasons. During off peak times the last ferry back from Parapat is 6pm. The cost of the ferry is 7000Rp. Buy your ticket on the boat. At the ferry wharf and on the ferry you will be approached by many of the local young men trying to persuade you to go to the hotel they are affiliated with. These guys are mostly harmless and just trying to make a living guiding tourists. They can be a good resource for information. There is no harm in going and checking their hotel out and if you're not happy with that hotel move on to the ones close by. Tuk-tuk is not that large so the hotels are close. See the list of hotels at the bottom of this page.

The Toba eruption (the Toba event) occurred at what is now Lake Toba about 67,500 to 75,500 years ago.[8] The Toba eruption was the latest of a series of at least three caldera-forming eruptions which have occurred at the volcano, with earlier calderas having formed around 700,000 and 840,000 years ago.[9] The last eruption had an estimated Volcanic Explosivity Index of 8 (described as "mega-colossal"), making it possibly the largest explosive volcanic eruption within the last 25 million years.

Bill Rose and Craig Chesner of Michigan Technological University have deduced that the total amount of erupted material was about 2,800 km3 (670 cu mi)[10] — around 2,000 km3 (480 cu mi) of ignimbrite that flowed over the ground, and around 800 km3 (190 cu mi) that fell as ash, with the wind blowing most of it to the west. The pyroclastic flows of the eruption destroyed an area of 20,000 square kilometres (7,722 sq mi), with ash deposits as thick as 600 metres (1,969 ft) by the main vent.[10]

To give an idea of its magnitude, consider that although the eruption took place in Indonesia, it deposited an ash layer approximately 15 cm (5.9 in) thick over the entire South Asia; at one site in central India, the Toba ash layer today is up to 6 m (20 ft) thick[11] and parts of Malaysia were covered with 9 m (30 ft) of ashfall.[12] In addition it has been variously calculated that 10,000 million metric tons of sulphuric acid[13][citation needed] or 6,000 million tons of sulphur dioxide[14] were ejected into the atmosphere by the event, causing acid rain fallout.

The Toba caldera is the only supervolcano in existence that can be described as Yellowstone's "bigger" sister. With 2,800 km3 (670 cu mi) of ejecta, it was an even greater eruption than the supereruption (2,500 km3) of 2.1 million years ago that created the Island Park Caldera in Idaho, USA. The eruption was also about three times the size of the latest Yellowstone eruption of Lava Creek 630,000 years ago. For further comparison, the largest volcanic eruption in historic times, in 1815 at Mount Tambora (Indonesia), ejected the equivalent of around 100 km3 (24 cu mi) of dense rock and made 1816 the "Year Without a Summer" in the whole northern hemisphere, whilst the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State ejected around 1.2 km3 (0.29 cu mi) of material. The largest known eruption since the Toba event, the Oruanui eruption in New Zealand around 24,500 BC, ejected the equivalent of 530 km3of magma.

Getting to Lake Toba

You can catch a bus to Lake Toba from most to the main towns in Sumatra. You can catch a train from Medan to P. Siantar which is only 40 minutes from Lake Toba by bus. The train leaves Medan at 10.05am and arrives in P. Siantar at around 12.45pm.

A public bus to and from Medan to Parapat costs 18,000Rp and takes around 3 - 4 hours.

There are also daily flights on Susi Air that fly from Medan to Silangit (12.40pm) and flights from Silangit to Medan (1.20pm). Silangit is just south of Lake Toba with buses available to transport you to Parapat after your flight. The flight times are 40 minutes.
reference:en.wikipedia.org,www.sumatra-indonesia.com