Cycling around Lake Maninjau with Garuda Indonesia

:: Cycling around Lake Maninjau with Garuda Indonesia ::

In effort to promote Indonesian tourism industry, especially in West Sumatra, Garuda Indonesia is organizing Garuda Indonesia Bike Tour – Maninjau Tour On February 1-3, 2013.

With Garuda Group Cycling Community (G2C2) taking part in this event, it is not the first Garuda Indonesia Bike Tour held. In fact, the event has been conducted for 15 times and counting. Furthermore, the Maninjau Tour taking place in West Sumatera is the second time since last year.

Apart from Maninjau, Garuda Indonesia Bike Tour has explored some domestic routes such as Toba, Ubud, Bandung, Lombok, Batu and Bangka. While on the accomplished international list, Garuda Indonesia Bike Tour has added four countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Japan dan China.

It is true that some of the reasons behind this event are to enjoy the sceneries and to know more about the local tourism potentials. However, it is also known that this sweat-generating activity is one of Garuda Indonesia’s tools in increasing the awareness on the importance of preserving the nature as well as in promoting cycling as a popular sport. Based on the number of participants and the positive feedbacks received by the organizer, it is safe to say that this event is well accepted in the society. As it turns out, the registration system tends to show that the number of participants usually exceeds the expectation within days since the announcement.

Garuda Indonesia Bike Tour also does an admirable job at facilitating the social nature of the participants by getting them involved in CSR projects during the tour. In the previous years, for instance, the participants were involved in a lot of social activities. In Toba, they took part in building the procurement of clean water. In Batu, they helped building sanitary and clean water facilities and in Lombok, the CSR project focused on the building of a kindergarten school. While in the Maninjau Tour, the participants helped build a madrasah school and a health facility.

In the future, Garuda Indonesia has planned to challenge the participants by taking them to experience the roads of Toraja, Solo and Surabaya.

The Tale of Lake Maninjau

Lake Maninjau, also known as Blue Pond, never fails to capture the attention of every visitor once they lay their eyes on it. The blue surface reflects the sunshine and beams golden rays on certain parts. There are 44 turns waiting for the visitors to pass by and enjoy the view.
By the lake, visitors get to see small villages with their backs on the steep hills. Lubuk Sao, Muko-muko, Sigiran and Tanjung Sani are villages named after people in the tale of Giran and Sani. According to the tale, they were a couple of teenagers who were deeply in live and later would be doomed to the crater of a volcano called Bukit Tinjau as their love was frowned upon. The tale also says that rain then poured for days, so heavily the crater turned into a lake which would later be known as Lake Maninjau.

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