Tag Archives for ritual
On the Up in Flores
It is a bright, sunny day and a beautiful ride. I’m starting to feel that the jinx that has befouled our overland mission from Bali to Papua is beginning to lift. It’s only taken a day and a half for the mechanic to find the part, mend our broken bike and deliver it proudly to [...]
A Cremation in Bali
The three giant black bulls had been sitting in state outside Ubud Palace for a day or so, golden necklaces adorning their necks, their dangling balls covered in gilded hair and their pink felt penises complete with a string so celebrants could wiggle them at will. The occasion? Why, a cremation. What else? These three [...]
“Are funerals like this in London?” asks my new Torajan friend. The dead man’s drum-shaped coffin emerges from the matrimonial bedroom where he has “slept”, preserved in formalin, with his family for the last eight months. Now he has left the house, he is finally dead, his soul winging its way towards the afterlife. “Not [...]
