Move over Bali and book a holiday at this peaceful Indonesian island instead

There are no raucous bars, no kids' clubs and no roadside souvenir shops selling Bali's ubiquitous Bintang singlets. Traffic is sparse, white-sand surf beaches are empty and market hawkers sell exquisite textiles made by hand.

Sumba, roughly the size of Hawaii's Big Island, is an arid, rocky place east of Bali. Inhabited by the indigenous Marapu people, the crowd-free island is on the rise as a quiet stand-in for Bali and a place to explore Sumba's ancient traditions.

It's the shaggy triangular roofs of the island's village huts that immediately pique my interest. On a village tour with guide Inda Kasni Putri, I learn the metres-high thatched towers function as a kind of portal to the spirit world.

"We call these houses uma mbatangu," she explains. "On the ground we keep animals. The second floor is where we live in extended families. Above us reside the spirits of our ancestors whose bodies we inter close to us in megalithic tombs. Like so many Marapu traditions, the design of these homes and the practices carried out within them date back thousands of years."

Armed with a freshly minted business degree and the ability to speak several island dialects, Bahasa Indonesian, as well as English, Inda is part of a new generation working in Sumba's nascent tourism industry. Her job as a village guide for the French-owned luxury resort Cap Karoso, open since 2023, is her first since graduating - and a primary means for supporting her family.

We meet in Cap Karoso's carpark for a one-on-one tour that begins with a 20-minute commute by minivan along Sumba's network of sealed and unsealed roads. Outside my window, the sky vanishes into the Indian Ocean. Miles of stringy shrubs cling to the island's parched terrain.

Ahead of us, two men travel the road: one seated behind the other on a beat-up trail bike; their feet bare; their dusty hair ruffling in the wind. In a field, kids with sticks knock yellow cashew apples to the ground, dislodging the creamy nuts from the tall boughs of fruiting trees. The island's long dry season and subsistence-farming economy make food harvesting a priority for all Sumbanese, even youngsters like these.

Today's tour is the highlight of my four-day visit to Sumba's Kodi region staying at Cap Karoso, a hotel specialising in immersive, off-the-beaten-track experiences. Experience-led tourism is a growing trend. In 2024, international tourism consultants RLA Global highlighted the continued popularity of slow travel, and travel where people contribute to wildlife conservation, environmental protection or preserving traditions.

For my part, I want to see first-hand how Sumba's homespun ikat weaving is done and meet some of the island's craftspeople. Ikat, which means to tie or bind, is a manual method of weaving practised throughout Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara province, but particularly here in Sumba.

Yarns are spun, dyed and woven into colourful fabrics used for clothing, gifts and trade. A single piece of ikat takes months and many hands to design and make.

Arriving at our village destination the mood is buoyant. A wedding is about to take place nearby. Villagers dress in ikat garments and chew betel nut. Traditional machetes in carved wooden sheaths are strapped to men's hips. I see a tethered buffalo standing in the open bed of a lorry. The sombre beast is surrounded by teenagers excitedly anticipating its slaughter and chanting in unison. "Every special occasion from weddings and funerals to the construction of a new home requires animal sacrifice. It's our way to give thanks and bring about good fortune," says Inda, ushering me towards a large wooden loom where a woman is weaving.

Ikat, says Inda as the lorry loaded with wedding guests departs, is typically made from natural materials - locally grown cotton, for example, and natural dyes extracted from garden plants like indigo and the Morinda shrub.

As the weaver gets up from her work, she smiles and signals to me to pick up where she left off. I follow the gestured instructions of a gathering crowd (no English is spoken here) before peals of laughter prompt us to switch back again.

The writer travelled at her own expense, but was a guest on the Cap Karoso village tour