Worldcrunch
This concert, courtesy of the Toraja people, provided a welcome balance to our day: My wife and I had just witnessed a traditional burial, in this village of southern Sulawesi — and it featured the pretty gruesome slaughtering of a water buffalo.
Cross this gate and you’ll step into the land of the Toraja, in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi region. Keep your eyes peeled: from traditional Batak houses to spooky funeral rites and even a buffalo sacrifice — in the home to the Toraja ethnic group, I hardly had time to breathe between two shots!
In southern Indonesia’s Torajan villages, water buffalo horns are displayed on the houses’ facades as a mark of social standing.
The Toraja people in Southern Sulawesi, Indonesia, are famous for their elaborate funeral rites. Not only do they tend to mummify the deceased — they also store coffins in caves carved up on rocky cliffs and place a wooden effigy of the departed, called Tau tau, to guard the burial site. Spooky.
Fellow travelers from our organized tour were catching some rest in the shade of the tongkonan, the ancestral houses of the Toraja people in southern Sulawesi (the Indonesian island formerly know as Celebes). This was one of the first package holiday tours we went on, after having started to experiment with this form of group […]