Day 72 - Ganzi, Litang

2.10.09

I met two Americans and an Italian guy yesterday who are also going to Litang and so we all decide to head off together and get a cheaper group fare. We end up getting the fare for 80Y each as opposed to 110Y, which is a very nice discount. The ride is quite slow and we are also transporting a sick monk, who is ill with a mystery ailment that gives him a stomach ache, headache and causes him to throw up every time we stop. I give him some Ibuprofen which sorts out his headache and some of the stomach pain and then some herbal tea which I picked up and is supposed to be good for stomach bugs. I'm not sure if the herbal tea worked, but good old Tesco Ibuprofen got rid of his headache nice and fast. We pull into Litang in the early evening and are soon followed by bus loads of Chinese tourists all travelling during the eight day national holiday. The town suddenly becomes rammed and every hotel sells all its beds, our hotel owner even putting people into his house so they can have a place to stay. My late night town exploring ends up putting me in the middle of a rainstorm and some seriously wet and windy weather, arriving back at the hotel a bit cold and damp, I am told that we have the opportunity of going to a sky burial the next day. Wikipedia describes a Sky Burial as...

Sky burial or ritual dissection was once a common funerary practice in Tibet wherein a human corpse is cut in specific locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements or the mahabhuta and animals – especially to birds of prey. In Tibet the practice is known as jhator, which literally means, "giving alms to the birds." The majority of Tibetans adhere to Buddhism, which teaches rebirth. There is no need to preserve the body, as it is now an empty vessel. Birds may eat it, or nature may let it decompose. So the function of the sky burial is simply the disposal of the remains. In much of Tibet the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and with fuel and timber scarce, a sky burial is often more practical than cremation.

What basically happens is the body is placed upon an altar and then cut into pieces and the bones bashed to a pulp and mixed with flour and then it is all fed to vultures who eat the body parts. I'm not quite sure if it is something I want to see, but it is common practice in this area and if we do make it, then it will be one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen.