How Indonesia’s hijab-wearing female stunt bike rider is giving the men a run for their money

On an otherwise peaceful Saturday in February, in the hilly Indonesian village of Parlilitan, chickens flap and flee the buzz-saw revving of motor­cycle engines, made all the louder by their lack of exhaust pipes. The rum­blings reverber­ate through the forests and farmlands of North Sumatra, a signal to all in earshot – the exhaust systems having been removed on purpose – that the main event is drawing near.

A travelling carnival has set up camp here for the past two weeks, offering midway-style games of chance, carousel and Ferris wheel spins. Since locals say another peripatetic caravan may not pass through for a few years, Parlilitan’s sparse population of about 18,000, mostly farmers and hawkers, don’t want to miss the show. Haposan Sinaga, a 37-year-old farmer, says his only alternative would be “drinking palm wine and going to sleep”.

Parman Sembiring, 59, founder of the travelling Ikaman Enterprise, has been touring his pasar malam(“night market”) throughout North Sumatra since 1999, stopping in places as remote as Parlilitan and as big as Padang Sidempuan (population 200,000). Rural or urban, the roadshow’s most popular attraction is the Tong Setan: “Satan’s Barrel”.

Three or four of those exhaust-free bikes whip around the inside of a five-metre-high metal “barrel” at 40km/h, centrifugal at 90 degrees to the ground below, brake cables cut lest used inadvertently they cause an accident from a sudden stop (riders decelerate by gearing down with the clutch). Helmetless and hands-free, riders snatch low-denomination rupiah notes from the hands of spectators lining the upper edges, who jostle for space around the eight-metre circumference.

Satan’s Barrel is mostly a macho affair, but the enter­tain­ment-starved locals of Parlilitan are here to see one performer above the others, 20-year-old Karmila Purba, Indonesia’s most popular female rider.