Threads of Life

Pung and I were headed to East Sumba to visit old friends and weavers. While there are plenty of flights to West Sumba, which is drawing more and more tourists to its beaches and luxurious surf resorts, for the last two months there have been no direct flights from Bali. We could have taken one of the West Sumba flights and then made the five-hour car ride to East Sumba, but instead we flew from Bali to Lombok and then onward to Waingapu. As we disembarked with ten other passengers, I felt I was stepping back in time to when we first visited East Sumba in 1996.