If you want to meet a Komodo dragon, almost everyone knows just one way in: Loh Liang, the national park's official post on Komodo Island. (Rinca Island has its own post, Loh Buaya, but this piece is about Loh Liang.) There is, however, another way in that more and more visitors now choose — trekking straight from Komodo Village itself, guided by rangers who are villagers born and raised here.
And behind this newer trail there is one name that almost never gets mentioned: Pak Alyas, a Komodo Island native and a partner of Indahnesia Tour since its earliest days in Labuan Bajo.
It started with one group of guests who would not do Loh Liang
The story begins in 2016, and at the time it had nothing to do with Indahnesia — these were Pak Alyas's own long-standing guests from Russia, who simply did not want to trek the dragons at Loh Liang. To honor the request, Pak Alyas took Pak Dulah along to Loh Liang, paid the entrance tickets right at the national park office, and asked permission to trek through Komodo Village instead. One guest request, and that was the seed of the whole village trail.
A push that stalled at the village head
It was not as simple as walking in. Pak Alyas first asked the village head for permission, and at the time the village head did not respond — he only gave direction: find your guides from among Komodo Village's own officials, the heads of Hamlets 01 through 05 and the village secretary. So Pak Alyas went to them one by one and asked them to guide his guests. One of them was Tajudin, then serving as head of Hamlet 02. (In the village structure a hamlet sits below the village head and above the neighborhood unit, so the trail's first guides were, in fact, the village's own officials.)
Built slowly, by hand
What began as a one-off trek, Pak Alyas built up little by little and at his own cost, together with Pak Saeh, the village's komodo woodcarver. The two of them, helped by other villagers, cleared and shaped the route until it became a real, established trail — complete with a large komodo monument at the top of the hill, named Galong Ora. That monument, too, is the work of Pak Alyas and Pak Saeh. The trail is tidy now: there is a "Komodo Village Walking Trails" map board, and the guides are villagers in "Komodo Village Local Guide" jerseys.
