NIHI Sumba

On the southwestern coast of Sumba island in eastern Indonesia, where the Savu Sea meets the island’s savannah interior, NIHI Sumba occupies 567 acres of clifftop and beach terrain at Nihiwatu, where the legendary left-hand surf break — one of the most powerful and consistent in the world — breaks in front of a beach that is managed as a private experience for the resort’s guests. The 28 villas are designed in the Sumba traditional architecture of high-pitched thatched roofs, hand-carved wooden pillars, and woven ikat textiles — the extraordinary hand-made cloth tradition of the Sumbanese people, whose complexity and cultural significance make it among the most important textile arts in Indonesia — and the combination of this architectural heritage with the contemporary quality of the resort’s guest experience is among the most successful integrations of local building culture and international luxury hospitality available in Asia.

The surf programme, including private wave permits that limit access to the Nihiwatu break at any one time, world-class surf guiding, and board shaping within the resort, gives experienced surfers access to one of the globe’s most coveted waves without the crowd pressure that has compromised comparable breaks elsewhere in Indonesia and beyond. For non-surfers, horse riding along the beach and into the savannah hills, visiting the traditional Sumbanese villages of the interior where the megalithic tomb tradition and the animist Marapu religion maintain their vitality, and the extraordinary sunset dinners at the clifftop position are among the most distinctive available in Indonesia. Spa treatments use Sumbanese botanical preparations and traditional Malay healing techniques.

NIHI Sumba’s SUMBA FOUNDATION, which was established before the resort opened and whose health, education, and malaria prevention programmes have served the communities surrounding Nihiwatu since the 1990s, gives the resort’s conservation and community credentials a depth of commitment that the foundation’s three decades of continuous operation makes credible in a way that more recently established programmes cannot yet demonstrate.