Sumatra, Indonesia by Drone

Contributor and drone pilot Thib from Above, who travels the world making drone videos, created this epic aerial tour of the northern and western parts of the gigantic Indonesian island of Sumatra.  The island is oriented on a northwest-southeast axis.  Whereas the central and southeastern parts of the island have a thin strip of mountains to the west and a wider strip of rainforest to the east, the northwestern parts of Sumatra is mostly mountainous and it contains the island's highest peaks.

Check out this captioned tour of some of the visual highlights of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, compliments of contributor aqwamhm.  The video includes footage of the following locations: Twin Lakes and Pasumpahan Island in West Sumatra, Sipiso Piso Waterfall in North Sumatra, Ampera Bridge in South Sumatra, Great Wall Koto Gagang in West Sumatra, Ujong Kareung Beach in Sabang, Mt. Kerinci and Gunung Tujuh Lake in Jambi, Tanjung Sunta in North Sumatra, Rubiah Island in Sabang, and more.  

Check out the beauty of Sumatra, Indonesia in this amazing drone video by Rifki.  The video was shot in various spots on the long western (Indian Ocean) coastline of this vast island, the sixth largest in the world in land area and the largest of the Indonesian islands after Borneo (which is half Indonesian).  Specific areas covered in the video are Bukittingi, Padang City (the capital of West Sumatra and the country's tenth largest city), Pesisir Selatan (just south of Padang), Pagang Island, and Mandeh. 

Former Drone Video of the Week Finalist Mattcoq brings us this excellent drone video from a resort on the Indonesian island of Cubadak.  Paradiso Village is located on the eastern side of the island, which is a satellite of the much larger island of Sumatra that lies immediately to its east.  An emerging tourist destination, Cubadak is most easily accessible from the city of Padang, the capital of the province of West Sumatra which lies to the north.  It's about halfway down Sumatra's extremely long western coastline.  

North Sumatra is home to some of the most incredible natural scenery in Indonesia.  While the southern parts of the gigantic island are known for their rainforests, the northern part of Sumatra is much more mountainous, with many waterfalls.  In most places, the hills run right to the sea, so the area is blessed with spectacular ports and harbors surrounded by impressive hills.  This video, shot with a DJI Mavic Pro by JJong, will give you a bird's eye view of this amazing region of one of the world's largest islands.

Contributor and drone pilot Mattcoq used a DJI Phantom 3 Professional drone combined with ground camera footage to create this brief aerial tour of Cubadak, a small island off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia.  The island is a short distance off the western coast of the gigantic island, near the city of Padang which is the capital of the province of West Sumatra.  Comparatively undiscovered, Cubadak offers a beautiful tropical environment that is easily accessible from mainland Sumatra.

Harau Valley lies on the west coast of the massive Indonesian island of Sumatra (Sumatera) in Indonesia, between the important provincial cities of Pekanbaru and Bukittingg.  The valley is a magnificent area of canyons and rock formations with lush green forests and rice fields in between.  Contributor Riojaya's drone video of this amazing area of the world's sixth largest island (measured by land area) was selected as a Finalist for the AirVuz Drone Video of the Week Contest in August, 2018.

Top contributor AerialRhianna created this epic drone video of Bukit Lawang, a village in the heart of the jungle of North Sumatra in Indonesia.  The village sits on the Bahorok River, which flows eastward through the province before discharging into the Malacca Strait.  Bukit Lawang is home to the largest animal sanctuary of Sumatran orangutan, and also the main eastern access point to the Gunung Leuser National Park.  The area has become one of Indonesia's top eco-tourism destinations.

Contributor and drone pilot Kinjo created this excellent drones-eye view of his hometown of Padang, Indonesia.  Located about halfway down the western coast of Sumatra, Padang is the capital of the province of West Sumatra.  With a population of about a million, it's one of the country's ten largest cities and one of the four largest on Sumatra.  In terms of tourism, Padang is known in part as a gateway to the islands which line the western coast of the island and which include some of the world's best surfing beaches.   

Check out this beautiful drone video of the Indonesian island of Belitung, compliments of contributor By_ewold.  Belitung is situated just east of Sumatra, the largest island in the Indonesian archipelago by land area.  It's one of the two main islands of the province of Bangka Belitung Islands.  Covering an area of about 4.8k square km (around 1.8k square mi.), Belitung has a population of about a quarter million.  Surrounded by the blue-green waters of the Java Sea, it's become a popular destination for snorkeling and scuba diving.  

Contributor and drone pilot AerialRhianna was able to aerially capture an eruption of Mt. Sinabung, a very active volcano in the north-central part of the gigantic island of Sumatra in Indonesia.  After four centuries of dormancy, the volcano began erupting again in 2010.  This video was filmed during an eruption event in 2013, which caused the evacuation of almost 4,000 people.  There were further eruptions in 2014 and 2016;  the latter case, an eruption killed seven people who were in the area.  

For a first upload to AirVuz, brand-new contributor and pilot dronetraveller brings us this excellent drone video of the world's largest volcanic lake: Indonesia's Lake Toba.  Situated in the north-central part of the giant island of Sumatra, Lake Toba sits in the caldera of an extinct supervolcano.  The lake is long (100 km or around 60 mi.), wide (30 km or about 19 mi.), and deep (just over 500 meters or about 1.65k ft.).  The eruption which created the lake occurred about 75k years ago, and was the largest in 25 million years.  

What better place to show off the Kaloea Surfing Bikini's than a wavepark in an Indonesian tropical paradise?  That's what brought the Kalea Surfer Girls to the Mentawi Wavepark.  The Mentawi Islands, which are located just off the western coast of the gigantic Indonesian island of Sumatra, has become a go-to spot for surging and derivative aquatic activities in Southeast Asia.  Live vicariously with these bird's eye views of the beautiful Kalea girls taking on the epic Indian Ocean surf!

Situated on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Fort Marlborough was one of the most important defensive British fortifications during the Colonial Era.  It was built in the early 18th century by the British East India Company, which was largely responsible for creating the British Empire in Asia.  Thereafter, until the dissolution of the Empire after World War II, Fort Marlborough was considered the strongest British fortification in southern/southeastern Asia after its fortress in Madras, India.

New contributor and drone pilot Hosea brings us this excellent drone video from the Indonesian island of Batam.  Batam is one of the main islands in the Riau Islands, a sub-archipelago which lies just east of the giant island of Sumatra and just south of the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland.  The video features footage of the following locations:  the Nagoya (Lubuk Baja) District of Batam city, the Batam city center, Muka Kuning Industrial Area, the Tg Uncang Hotel, Barelang Bridge, the Sambu Island, Hang Nadim Airport, and Kabil.

This drone video by eedgreeng will give you an aerial tour of the Indonesian island of Bangka.  Check it out for a captioned tour of the following spots in Bangka, which lies just southeast of ]Sumatra: Tanjung Berikat Beach, Kurau Village, Pasir Padi Beach, Emas Bridge, Tikus Beach, Putri Island, Taman Merdeka Square, Basung Berikat, Tanjung Berikat Beach, Port of Belinyu, Batu Dinding, Siangau Beach, Sentosa Cemetery, Blue Lake, Tapak Antu Beach, Terentang Beach, and Pasir Padi Beach.

At the southern tip of the gigantic island of Sumatra, Indonesia, there is a rocky beach that is called Gigi Hui, which translates roughly into "Sharks Teeth".  If you watch this drone video by content creator and pilot Kinjo, you will understand where the name comes from. Just offshore of the beach, there are a series of rocks which very much resemble them.  The beach is located near the town of Kelumbayan, and it's part of the Lampung province which covers the southern half of the world's sixth largest island.

Check out this awesome video of a resort area on the gigantic Indonesian island of Sumatra.  The "star" of the show is the Mandeh Resort, which is located near its namesake village in West Sumatra.  It its on a body of water known as the Carocok Tarusan Bay, which is situated just south of Padang, the capital of the West Sumatra province.  The video features footage of other spots around the bay, including the well-known Cudabak Island.  The area lies about halfway down Sumatra's long western coastline.  

Contributor efmed2001 created this beautiful drone video of  Indonesia's Tanjung Pesona Beach.  The beach lies on a shallow bay on the eastern side of Bangka Island.  Bangka is one of the two main islands of the province of the Bangka Belitung Islands, which lies off the southeastern coast of Sumatra.  With a population of close to a million and covering about 11.7k square km (around 4.7k square mi.), Bangka is a substantial island in its own right, even though it appears on a map as a tiny satellite of Sumatra. 

It is sometimes forgotten that the world's largest Muslim-majority nation is nowhere near the Middle East or North Africa where Islam first took hold.  Rather, it is in the Southeast Asian archipelago of Indonesia, which is home to well over 200 people of Muslim faith.  Given this enormous number of practitioners, it's not surprising that Indonesia is also home to countless mosques.  In this video by contributor Arisulistianto, you'll get a bird's eye view of the Sultan Abdullah Great Mosque on the massive island of Sumatra.

Check out this drone video of the tiny Indonesian island of Ketawai, compliments of AirVuz contributor ariotrihantoro.  Ketawai lies just to the east of the much larger island of Bangka, which in turn lies just east of the gigantic island of Sumatra (the world's sixth-largest and the largest exclusively Indonesian island).  Ketawai has no permanent inhabitants.  It is accessible by boat from the "mainland" of Bangka; the total trip distance from the Pangkalpinang (the provincial capital, on Bangka) is about 30 km or around 18 mi.  

Cubabak is a small island which sits off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the largest island in the archipelago by land area.  Contributor Mattcoq traveled to the island for Chinese New Year and used a DJI Phantom 3 Professional drone to create a stunning aerial tour of this tropical paradise, which lies just a short distance across the water from the provincial city of Padang.  Padang is the most important urban area on the western coast of Sumatra and is the capital of the West Sumatra province.  

The Indonesian archipelago is home to over 17k distinct islands.  These include three of the world's six largest islands (Borneo (#2) and New Guinea (#3) being shared, while Sumatra (#6) is exclusively Indonesian territory).  At the other extreme are thousands of tiny islands, many of them uninhabited and barely visible on a map.  In this drone video by AirVuz contributor ariotrihantoro, you'll get an aerial glimpse of two tiny islands which lie off the eastern coast of Banta, itself an easter  "satellite" of Sumatra.  

See Tanjung Pinang, the capital of Indonesia’s Riau Islands, by first person view (FPV) drone in this video courtesy of AirVuz contributor and FPV pilot guks_fpv. Right off the top of the video you can see one of the amazing beaches the area is known for before quickly moving on to Vihara Ksitigarbha Bodhisatvva, a Buddhist temple in the city that is home to 500 Lohan statues. Other standout locations include Gedung Gonggong and Masjid Raya Sultan Riau Pulau Penyengat, as well as plenty of shots nature around the city.