Why hanging coffins

These words from the Indian mythological epic Bhagavadgita echoed in my head as I cast my eyes on the coffins that hung from the tip of the Cliff. I was lost in thoughts.

So many religions in the world, rituals and weird practices, so many ways to worship, believe and admire the supernatural power — And, all lead to the same truth. The mountain province is so much different than the part of the Philippines that boasts of the best beaches and islands in the world. I had started my journey from Manila. I had signed up for an eco walking tour on my first day. I joined some Filipinos and Jordan, our guide, in the afternoon.

Walking past St. The cemetery, more than a hundred years old, has an area where the martyrs of the world war have been laid to rest. We had passed through the picturesque echo valley and climbing a steep hill led to the UNESCO heritage site — the hanging coffins, which perched from the mountain, just below the top of the cliff. Tibetans and Mongolians practice sky burials -- where bodies are chopped up and offered to vultures or other animals. In more recent years, Wong's obsession has taken him to Sagada, Luzon, in the Philippines, where cliff burials were practiced as recently as No protection?

Earlier this year, I inadvertently rekindled Wang's interest in China's hanging coffins when I shared some photos of the caskets in a cave in Guizhou I came across unexpectedly during a trip to the province in Never having heard of hanging coffins in this area, Wong set out from his China field office in Kunming in the neighboring province of Yunnan with a small team to find out more. The cave where the coffins are located is only accessible by river, which emerges from the spectacular limestone cave where the coffins are stacked.

It takes away the joy and the reward for big effort. I like the footnotes. The Guizhou cave with the coffins is only accessible by river, where bamboo rafts are the traditional form of transport.

Li Fei, a researcher at the Guizhou Provincial Institute of Archaeology, says that there were up to cave coffin sites in the province and the burial practice was followed by Yao and Miao minorities in the region. Most of the coffins date back to the Ming or Qing dynasties, he adds, though some date back to the Tang dynasty. The Guizhou site Wong and I visited, like others, wasn't well-protected. Reluctant to scramble up the rocky sides of the caves I didn't get close, but Wong said that while some of the 30 or so coffins were intact, most were falling apart -- bones and disintegrating clothing visible.

Wong was told that there used to be more than coffins in an elevated part of the cave but a fire destroyed them. Banknotes have also been left by more recent visitors to the site, a superstitious offering for the dead, though not all visitors are respectful -- one skull had a cigarette jutting out of its jaw.

In a steep gorge down river, local tourist authorities have erected fake hanging coffins -- perhaps an effort to satiate tourist curiosity and preserve the existing site. In , at one of the most famous hanging coffin sites in Matangba, Sichuan, which Wong had first visited in the s, he discovered that many of the coffins had been looted -- despite being some 90 meters above the ground and being protected as "national cultural relics. She has completed numerous guidebook writing assignments for Rough Guides that have taken her to far-flung corners of the globe, from the Brazilian Amazon to the remotest province of the Philippines.

Follow her kikideere on Instagram and Twitter. Planning to travel here? Go tailor-made! The hanging coffins of Sagada, Philippines. Related tailor-made travel itineraries for Philippines. Planning on your own? In a ritual believed to date back 2, years, the Igorot people bury their dead in hand-carved coffins that are tied or nailed to the side of a cliff and suspended high above the ground below. This gravity-defying graveyard is believed to bring the departed closer to their ancestral spirits.

Traditionally, the elderly have hollowed their own coffins from local timber and painted their names on the side. The body is then smoked to delay it from rotting as relatives pay their respects over several days.

Coffins hang from a cliff in Sagada, the Philippines.