Rumah Ati is almost a hundred-year-old Kalimantan house made of Kayu Ulin, or Iron Wood - the same wood the Dutch used to build the railroads in Indonesia - The owner Atty Mansyurdin, believed in Indonesia's concept of the living house, that houses can be recycled, reused. This ancient structure had a playful redesign in 2019 into the inviting and modern jungle cabin that now sits on the edge of the Leuser National Park - the largest Sumatran Tropical Rainforest and UNESCO World Heritage Biosphere Reserve. With views directly overlooking the jungle you may be visited by local owls and maybe even a heard of wild elephants and orang utans!
The lovely village of Tangkahan is home to 9 semi-wild elephants that you can bathe, feed and trek with. "Rumah" means "home" and "Ati" means "heart" thus, this home is full of heart. You can slow down, sip coffee and enjoy time with family and friends, watching the clouds pass through the jungle tops or cooking in our full kitchen. If cooking is not your thing, we offer organic, local flavor from our in-home catering chef, Ibu Maria. Our cabin loft has two queen beds and can accommodate up to ten people sleeping slumber-party style, with curtains to provide privacy. We want Rumah Ati to feel like your home in the jungle.
As I touched down in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia where I have lived happily for 10 years, I cried. I had just spent 3 days in a little village called Tangkahan and I felt like I had discovered a new part of myself. I had never felt the magic of a place like I did in the jungle. Who new a girl from a small beach town would end up being a city-dwelling jungle lover. After several trips to Tangkahan, I told my partner "We need to be here, I don't know how and I don't know what, but I love the place and I love the people." And it was meant to be, Rumah Ati evolved step by step, with the biggest suprise in building is finding out that wile elephants like to come and drink from our fish pond and eat our eggplant.