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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.
(Mon 3rd Mar 2008, 22:40, More)