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Coverage / Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste

Southeast Asia

A young Southeast Asian nation on the eastern half of Timor island, independent only since 2002 after a long resistance to Indonesian occupation, where the offshore island of Atauro sits above some of the most biodiverse reefs on earth, the capital Dili keeps the memory of the struggle, and Mount Ramelau rises to nearly three thousand metres above the coffee-growing highlands.

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What you can do in Timor-Leste

Museums & Galleries

DiliMay Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct NovTimor-Leste won its independence in 2002 after twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation and a resistance that cost as much as a quarter of the population, and Dili is where that story is kept. The Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum, in the former Portuguese Court of Justice building that was burned in the 1999 violence, lays out the armed and clandestine struggle in an exhibition called To Resist is to Win, using documents, photographs and audio-visual testimony. A short distance away, Centro Nacional Chega occupies the old Balide prison where the Portuguese and then the Indonesian military held and tortured Timorese, its cells preserved with the graffiti of the detained and an exhibition drawn from the national truth commission. Together they make Dili one of the most powerful places in Southeast Asia to understand a nation forged in resistance.

Scuba Diving

Atauro IslandMay Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct NovAtauro sits over what surveys call the richest reef on the planet: a 2016 Conservation International rapid assessment recorded an average of 253 reef-fish species per dive site, the highest ever measured. The island drops steeply into the deep Ombai-Wetar Strait, so healthy coral gardens, walls and slopes start metres from the shore and the water stays clear all year, even in the rainy season. Dives run straight off the beach onto vivid house reefs, or by short boat to walls patrolled by trevally, tuna and reef sharks, with turtles, mandarinfish and the odd passing cetacean from the strait. Two established dive operations, one a PADI resort working with the marine-protected-area effort, run the sites for divers of every level while the island stays quiet and undeveloped, a rare combination of world-class reef and unhurried island life.

Trekking / Hiking

Mount RamelauMay Jun Jul Aug Sep OctClimbing Mount Ramelau for sunrise is the classic Timorese trek and a genuine pilgrimage. Tatamailau, at 2,963 metres the highest point in Timor-Leste and on the whole island of Timor, rises from the coffee-growing highlands, and the walk starts in the small hours from Hato Builico, the highest village in the country at around 1,900 metres. A steep two to three hour climb by torchlight brings you to a summit crowned by a white statue of Our Lady of Fatima, placed here in 1997, where at dawn the light spreads over ridge after ridge and, on a clear morning, both the north and south coasts of the island appear at once. Timorese climb it in numbers for the March pilgrimage, but the mountain is walkable year round with a local guide from the village, and the cool highland air and coffee slopes are a world away from the coast.

Wildlife Safaris

Atauro IslandApr May Oct Nov DecThe deep channel between Atauro and the Timor mainland, the Ombai-Wetar Strait, is one of the world's great cetacean corridors, and a boat off Atauro is a front-row seat. The strait is a migration highway where blue whales, the largest animals that have ever lived, pass alongside sperm whales, short-finned pilot whales, melon-headed whales and huge pods of spinner and bottlenose dolphins, with sightings of a dozen or more cetacean species recorded in these waters. The peak is the transition into the dry season and again in October and November, when the animals move through the strait in numbers and boats set out from the island's lodges to find them. This is wild, deep-water whale watching, not a provisioned show, and the same trips often turn up turtles, flying fish and sea birds against a backdrop of Atauro's steep green coast.

Best months at a glance

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Museums
Scuba Diving
Trekking
Wildlife Safaris