Sky Funeral
In Tibet a few years ago we attended a sky funeral. When your country (well, autonomous region) is perched 4km is the air with the ground almost permanently frozen, it can be difficult to bury people.

Instead, at certain sites, bodies are prepared (skin sliced and rubbed with some kind of muesli concoction). They are then left for the vultures to eat. Hygienic *and* green.

So we were co-opted by the grieving relatives (who have trekked for days to get to one of the sites) into, well, basically preventing the vultures from starting to chow down before the bodies had been prepared.

If you've never seen a hundred vultures up close (close enough to touch) it is a startling site. The birds are so pumped up they start to try and eat each other. They gaze intelligently and calculatingly at every slight gap, sizing up the weak points on the line and closing in until you rush at them. Oh yes, and they're huge things; bigger than a child.

Still, this is welcome respite from the grisly scene behind: yellow bloated bodies being slashed around like big wobbling creme caramels.

But finally the bodies are ready and the vultures are allowed through. Thus follows a seething mass of hundreds of vultures ripping and tearing flesh. Memorable scenes include:

1. Vulture exits stage left with a hand in its mouth, rest of mostly-eaten arm snaking along behind pursued by, well, some more vultures.

2. A head popping out of the seething mass and rolling along the ground, bobbing jauntily as if it were a beachball for the Adams family.

The whole thing lasted about 2 minutes before all of the bodies were picked clean and the vultures moved onto coffee and cigars. This is all true; apart from the coffee and cigars.

I've still not decided how I feel about it.
(oxbow_lakes, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 22:40, 11 replies)

yikes
I don't think I could watch a family member being 'buried' in this way.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Tue 4 Mar 2008, 0:42, closed)

Yikes.
Ive just Wikid it.
I decided not to try You Tube.
(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Tue 4 Mar 2008, 2:13, closed)

I'd like to be eaten

by Giant Pandas when I die. might put some lead in their pencils, the lazy gits!
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 9:01, closed)

'wobbling creme caramels'
I like that line and couldn't help but smile. The whole process sounds horrible but in some ways probably not a bad way to get rid of bodies!
(Studentken is looking for motivation on, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 9:50, closed)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial
It was at Drigung monastery we saw ours. There were some other westerners there also, one of whom was taking photographs despite everyone being explicitly told that this was disresepctful and we shouldn't do it. Twunt.
(oxbow_lakes, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 10:28, closed)

"with the ground almost permanently frozen"
that's not true! I went in April (2000) and a fair bit of it was lovely and green, with plants and wotnot. It is very rocky though.

Stunning place though, wish I could go back some day.
( catness, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 14:17, closed)

Another intersting burial rite...
I have a friend who lives on the east coast of the south of Sweden (Skåne). There he knows some very "alternative" Swedes who make sacrifices to the Norse gods at Midsummer.

One of them had the horrible experience of being pre-deceased by his own son. Somehow they managed to get a permit, which allowed this scene to unfold.

A boat of simple but old construction, loaded with a funeral pyre was held in place at the sandy shore as the father carried his son to the top.

The boat was then set alight, and pushed out into the Baltic, to be carried away by the gentle offshore summer breeze.

Huge amounts of Snaps and beer were consumed as the friends and family sang long into the evening, watching the boat drift out of sight.

It must have been truly magical, and I'm sorry I missed it.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Tue 4 Mar 2008, 14:56, closed)

To be quite honest, I like the sound of this.
Take a typical British funeral.

1) Awful church service where you have to sing dreary songs and you realise you haven't been in a church since the last funeral.

2) Off to the Crem, an awful 60's building where they pull a leaver and off the dearly departed goes on a conveyor belt to join the rest of the stiffs to wait it's turn. You get back what you assume is the dearly departed ashes (every bit?).

3) Ashes get scattered (into everybodys eyes by inevitable wind) or burried in a plot that will be dug up in 100 years and re-used.

Nope, I think Tibet has something there.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 15:10, closed)

Vultures?
Sounds like the Towers of Silence, traditional funeral of a Zoroastrian. Must be difficult to know that because of the lack of vultures your body can't be disposed of in the way recommended by your religion.
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 15:29, closed)

@Miss Emmypenny
I dare say there are enough buzzards and crows around these parts to do the job of the vultures, albeit probably a bit less efficiently. The buzzard population has boomed in the UK in recent years.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 16:24, closed)

Permasortafrost
"that's not true! I went in April (2000) and a fair bit of it was lovely and green, with plants and wotnot"

We were there in October 2003 and it was pretty chilly. Don't forget that the temperatures plunge out of the sun, so at night it drops to well below zero. 4km above sea level the air temperature is between 24 and 40 degrees below sea-level in moist and dry atmospheres respectively.
(oxbow_lakes, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 17:00, closed)