Day: 259
Sometimes a rare day occurs where it all just seems to come together photographically for me; i.e. great skies, spectacular subjects, vultures, and (of course) me not being hungover or feeling like shit. Today happened to be one of those remarkable days.
We visited a number of Tibetan monasteries, temples, a locals families house for afternoon beers and tea, and saw the worlds largest pile of carved prayer stones (around 2 billion!), but my favorite sight of the day is the sky burial site, which is now not excessively favored by the Chinese government for its “barbarism”. As a Tibetan Buddhist you have four choices of how to remove you body from the mortal plain after you die. Earth (burying), Fire (incineration), Water (being dropped in a lake for the fishes) and my new choice, Sky.
When you die your family calls up a local monk and you all head out to the sky burial sight, body in tow. The monk then proceeds to cut off your deceased head, and chops the rest of your body into small pieces. The pieces are then thrown to the awaiting vultures who quickly (around 20 minutes) devour your flesh. Once the flesh is picked from your bones, they are gathered up, smashed into little bits, mixed with your skull, brain, intestines, and organs into vulture friendly bites. They proceed to finish the job. If you are old and don’t have much meat on your bones, you may have to be mixed with some yak meat to make sure the vultures will enjoy all your tasty goodness. Oh, and the best part is that anything not left eaten by the birds is finished off by the local dogs!
The only reason vultures were present for me to take pictures of today is because they had a burial a few hours before and it takes them most of the day to digest most of their meal before they can fly again. They just hopped around as I snuck up to get as close as I could with my 200mm.
I used to think cremation was the way to go, but now I am having my doubts. Just imagine your family standing around with a keg while vultures pick the flesh from your skeleton! Hell of a way to go…
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Just want you to know that this is one of the blogs I’ve been following for some time – I LOVE your photos. This post was so interesting. How creepy that the vultures are still hanging around! Good luck with that altitude sickness and enjoy Asia.
S-P-E-C-T-A-C-U-L-A-R!!!!!
*I love the doggies too…mmmm tasty human treats!
eh my head hurts. Dude go buy some aspirin!
Is that how you bury someone you don’t particularly like? I wonder why they call it a sky burial. By the time the birds have digested the meat and can fly they start dropping it back I can see why it might not be favored. Great pictures.
Vultures. I love it!
Just think of the vegetables we could grow in the compost!
Where is your red robe Rob?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Have a good day on Monday!