If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (IDR5,700,000.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
If you’ve got a case of the ‘been there, done thats’, let us reassure you that the world’s not done with surprising you. Take the Sanubari, which at first glance looks like the blueprint for a luxurious beach resort with its thatched villas and the requisite endless white sands and stained-glass waters. However, this resort sits in a vast swathe of off-the-radar isle Sumba, Indonesia’s ace up its sleeve, where locals still live in village clusters, practising ancient Marupu religious rites and making ikat weavings, ceramics and carvings (which you’ll find in your villa). You’ll see herds of buffalo wander along the sands, chat with fishermen breaking for beers, ‘swim’ with horses and be truly transported on a genuine-article getaway.
Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 2pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £371.17 (IDR6,897,000), including tax at 21 per cent.
More details
Rates include a breakfast of fresh coffee and juices, fruit salad and an array of Western and Asian mains (say, pancakes with ginger-star anise syrup and lime cream, nasi goreng or a dragonfruit smoothie bowl), plus gluten-free choices.
Also
While villas are sizeable enough for guests with mobility issues to comfortably stay in, rustic and sandy surrounds make navigation harder.
Please note
Pickleball fans, a court is in the works.
At the hotel
Public beach, 120-hectare reserve, farm, outdoor gym, volleyball court, pushbikes to borrow and snorkelling kit, charged laundry service, universal plugs, and free WiFi. In rooms: TV (on request), wireless speaker, yoga mat, desk, minibar, international plug sockets, bathrobes, free bottled water, coffee and tea kit, custom eco-friendly bath products, air-conditioning and ceiling fan.
Our favourite rooms
All villas are set on the beach and have uninterrupted ocean views, so you won’t be missing out whichever you book. Styled with pitched alang-grass-thatched roofs, they echo the houses in the local villages, and are filled with local carvings, ikat weavings and ceramics, but with a modern bent. For your own private swimming spot, and a bath tub set (discreetly) by the window, choose the one- or two-bedroom Beachfront Pool Villas.
Poolside
Some villas have their own private pool, generously sized and terrazzo-lined, blending seamlessly into the sand; and the Savu Sea has those mightily inviting brochure-ready waters that are all the more luminous in person.
Spa
The lack of a spa won’t trouble your relax-ometer, whose needle will be hovering around the ‘Hindu cow’ marker. But if you need some get-up-and-go, the alfresco gym will challenge you callisthenics-style.
Packing tips
You won’t want for home comforts here, but Sumba doesn’t exist in service to tourists; don’t expect to be able to stock up in a local shop (easily, anyway), so make sure your travel kit’s together before take-off. That includes eco-friendly mozzie spray. Having said that, Sumba stays wonderful through collective effort so try not to bring, and definitely don’t leave, any disposables.
Also
It’s not just locals you’ll see ambling along the beach, but also herds of buffalo or wild horses, lazy lizards and frolicking dolphin pods among Sumba’s many untamed characters.
Children
There aren’t any dedicated facilities for kids, but the Two-Bed Pool Villa fits a family of four, and there are distractions suited to younger guests who’ll thrill at the adventure of it all.
Sustainability efforts
The hotel plays its part in keeping Sumba paradisiacal well. An onsite farm supplies the kitchen with fresh produce (and only local growers and fishermen are called on to supplement), solar panels are being installed, bath products are custom made and green as can be, and plastics have been drastically reduced. Villas have been built using local stone, teak and alang grass, and thousands of native trees have been planted within the resort. The native community has been cared for, too, forming a 100-strong team of staff; and owners have built a school and water stations for the nearby kampungs (villages).
Those romantics at the Sanubari have the (heart) eye for a love-story setting, say a table on the beach for a sunset barbecue, cushions on the sand round a fire pit, or a parasol-shaded clifftop picnic.
Dress Code
Brights, colour, pattern… Swathe yourself in Balinese batiks.
Hotel restaurant
The romantic thatch-topped dining pavilion – with its carved pillars, ikat hangings and cane-backed seating – echoes the look of the traditional Sumbanese uma keladas (peaked houses). It sits right on the sand, so sea views are a given. The menu skews both east and west – you could have chicken parm, fish tacos or herb-crusted fish; but we prefer the picks from this part of the world: nasi goreng, coconutty rendang, char siu chicken and yellow curry.
Hotel bar
The bar also looks like a village residence, with its thatched moptop and wood carvings. It’s built on sand too, so you can easily mosey your drinks to your day-bed. Many ingredients come from the hotel farm, which grows passionfuit, hibiscus flowers, soursop fruit, bananas, pineapples, coconuts, lemongrass, and rosemary. The signature sipper called, well, the Sanubari, takes a sweet, sticky tamarind reduction from the hotel’s 200-year-old trees and shakes it over ice before adding generous slugs of gin. We'd chase that with a Dragon in Shaker (with dragonfruit, rum and lime), banana daiquiri with fresh garden fruit, or vodka mixed with lemongrass and lime.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 7am, lunch from noon and dinner from 6pm.
Room service
Restaurant dishes can be brought to your villa from 7am to 8pm.
The Sanubari sits on the sands of the pristine southwest coast of Indonesia’s ancient yet up-and-coming isle of Sumba, where its 120-hectare plot is buffered by thick jungle.
Planes
Tambolaka Airport is the closest to the hotel; you can easily connect from Denpasar (AKA Ngurah Rai) in Bali, around a 90-minute flight. Airport transfers (in various vehicles, for up to seven guests at a time) are included in your room rate and while the drive is nearly two hours, you’ll see a wonderfully wild cross-section of the island en route.
Automobiles
Drop and floppers won’t need wheels of any kind, but if you’re more explorative, note that Sumba’s infrastructure lags a little behind the growing interest in visiting it, so driving can be tricky (and not recommended after dark), although it is possible to hire a car or a motorbike. You can sidestep any navigational stress by hiring a driver for the day (most wait around the airport, but you’ll be whisked off when you arrive, so ask hotel staff to help arrange); be sure to be clear about what you’re hoping to see and do. The hotel has not one but three secure car parks (one by the restaurant, two by the villas).
Other
The hotel’s helipad lets you arrive with swagger.
Worth getting out of bed for
Hermits have never had it so good. Now that Sumba’s an unleashed secret it may be as busy as Bali a few years down the line, but for now the island’s roughshod remoteness is a rare asset. Local communities have had little interference, meaning life – and the Marupu religon’s rituals and ceremonies, such as megalithic burials – carry on as they have for centuries. The Sanubari’s owners have built goodwill with the neighbouring kampungs (Sumbanese for ‘village’), so a limited number of lucky guests can visit to learn more about the locals and buy handicrafts to take home. Of course, your main source of entertainment is the beach: 2.5 kilometres of gleaming white sand and ‘are you kidding me?’ glowy blue-green waters. You could simply drop down on a towel (classic), play beach games, tennis and volleyball or snorkel using the hotel’s free-to-hire gear (part of the beach has a vibrant reef and curious turtles). Embark on a cruise aboard the hotel boat; go fishing; paddle boarding; or surfing on the three rideable breaks along Sanubari’s shorefront (there are more a short bike ride away). Or take it to the next level with kite-surfing. The hotel has some very special horse-riding experiences, saddling up for sunrise or set, or – our pick – ‘swimming’ with them, riding bareback through the waves. Inland lies dense jungle, rice paddies that look like you could reach out and stroke them, and coconut groves: great for hiking and motorbiking and a spot of mountaineering. Ignore TLC’s advice and spend a day-trip chasing waterfalls – you’ll head off on a 45-minute ride (with a guide if you wish) which takes you through the Wanukaka Valley to the Lapopu cascades in Manupeu Tanah Daru National Park and the 75-metre-tall Matayangu falls in Waimanu village.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this fabulously remote resort on lesser-trodden Sumba and unpacked their ikat hangings and rash vests, a full account of their new-culture-unlocked break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside the Sanubari in Indonesia…
One of Indonesia’s undersung outposts, Sumba is known as ‘the forgotten island’, and, you know what, it’s true. In fact, we’ve already forgotten about its not-a-grain-out-of-place beaches, emerald rice paddies and magical waterfalls, the fascinating megalithic Marupu culture, and get-very-far-away-from-it-all boutique resort the Sanubari. You should forget about it, too, it’s not all that exciting, nothing to see here, go, get, shoo… I mean, who really wants to go ‘swimming’ bareback with gentle horses, zip through coconut groves on a motorbike, and have the extremely rare privilege of touring a kampung (village) where western culture has hardly made a dent? It’s barely worth us recounting tales of barefoot sundowners, made using the nectar of 200-year-old tamarind trees, on the sand; or falling asleep to the sound of waves in an alang-grass-thatched villa filled with locally made ikat hangings and wood carvings. OK, fine, the Sanubari is incredible and we’re in love, but there are so few places in the world that feel truly undiscovered and this is one of them. So, we want to tell you to go away – but for a once-in-a-lifetime trip, we suppose you should go here, and then conveniently forget you ever did….
