I spent the day at the hotel talking with a few Tibetans about traditions etc. One that really surprised me is that when someone dies, they go to a hillside where a Buddhist monk performs a prayer ceremony then another man takes an ax and chops up the body so the vultures can eat it. It’s something called a Sky burial or something like that. Sounds pretty brutal but for them it’s tradition. The body is only a vessel. The spirit will be reincarnated again. For the Tibetans who are in exile in India, when someone dies they follow the Hindi tradition of cremation but one of the guys said that when he was in the 9th grade, a classmate had drowned and the whole class went to the funeral. In India they prepare the body for creation by putting oil and sugar on it but these two Tibetans didn’t know why sugar. Perhaps it helps the body to burn better. But he also told me that they have to break the limbs before the cremation too because if they don’t, during the cremation it looks like the body moves, and it actually does because it’s just a reaction to the heat and burning, so they do this so it stays still. He said the sound was really creepy. And during the cremation, they saw and heard the skull burst. I asked why the students HAD to attend the funeral and he said it reminds you that you are alive and life continues…. If you're interested in reading more about this tradition go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial There seems to be a practical side to this too...
In the afternoon on this day I went into the market with Tserin from the hotel because I needed to buy a few things and I wanted to try my luck at the satellite internet café again. This time it worked better AND I didn’t lose my borrowed sunglasses…. I loved some of the things we saw along the way especially in the OLD part of Leh. A big, old tree fell down across a small street and they just left it there, propped up with some wooden poles...
More later….
In the afternoon on this day I went into the market with Tserin from the hotel because I needed to buy a few things and I wanted to try my luck at the satellite internet café again. This time it worked better AND I didn’t lose my borrowed sunglasses…. I loved some of the things we saw along the way especially in the OLD part of Leh. A big, old tree fell down across a small street and they just left it there, propped up with some wooden poles...
More later….