Photos

I was fortunate enough to attend part of a cremation ceremony whilst at Nusa Lembongan in September.

The people congregate in the village near to the Temple and watch as cremation sarcophaguses are carried through the streets atop of young men's shoulders.

It is, by my observations, a joyful event for the Balinese and what appears the celebration of life, though I think more for the beginning of spiritual life more so than that of the life passed.

Several sarcophaguses in the shape of bull's, cow's, loin's and dragons, were carried through the street.

With an estimated 2,000 people watching the procession moved boisterously amid clouds of dust and fireworks, in an uproar of music, yelling, and hooting along it's path.

A few hours after the sarcophaguses reach the cemetery, the bodies they have been made for, are removed from a shallow grave and placed inside the sarcophagi, which is then placed onto a bamboo platform and burnt.

The local people I watched the procession with explained that, the following day they would return to the cremation site and pick through the ashes to retrieve the bones, which where then disposed of at sea.

On Lembongan, these cremation ceremony’s take place every three years, apparently though, according to culture the bodies must be buried for a minimum of three years, which means some of the corpse's have been buried for as long as six or seven years before being cremated.