After a motorbike ride down an empty road, my daughter and I found ourselves jumping off a high wooden platform into a deep lagoon with salt-white sand, healthy coral — and no one else around.
As the Indian Ocean splashed, we swam, jumped again and laughed. We lost track of time.
Maybe we were just lucky. The platform had to have been built by someone, for the fun of many. But it was neither the first nor last time that we felt practically alone in Sumba.
Sumba, one of Indonesia’s easternmost islands, is just an hour’s flight from Bali. But Sumba is as quiet as Bali is thumping. There are no digital nomads, DJ parties or drones at sunset.
The island is twice the size of Bali with one-fifth the population. The airport is a walk-across-the-tarmac affair with one baggage carousel and, on the 40-minute drive to our hotel, we saw maybe a dozen people.