The place of the sky burial

 A vulture feather...

 A leftover knife, they never used the instruments again....

 Human bone fragments..... from previous sky burial.

 A hair piece from a previous sky burial.

It was obvious that we were in the right place, that this was where sky burials are held. We arrived at 7.30am and waited till almost 10am, all the while wondering if we were really going to witness a sky burial that morning. It was a lovely morning, a little chilly, at 4,000m above sea level, the climb up the hill was affecting our breathing. Everyone was in high spirits, though most had misgivings about the whole thing until I explained to them the meaning of a sky burial. The Tibetan Buddhists beleived that the dead body is now an empty vessel and what is more honorable than to feed another living thing, in this case, the vultures, with it. Besides in Tibetan areas, any other forms of burial is not viable. Besides they believe that the soul should not regconise its familiar body and be tempted to come back and be reincarnated and therefore repeat 'samsara.' 'Samsara' is the process of birth, life and death. Life is so full of pain and the goal is not to reincarnate but to disappear.
Seen from this perspective, a sky burial, is a beautiful thing, no one cries at sky burials. Well, the family never attends one, only friends attend the sky burial and helps in the process. The corpse is kept in the home for three days while monks come and pray over it, to guide the soul into 'bardo.' Then only is the sky burial performed. It is very graphic and might be offensive to some readers. My companions from the hostel was amazed at what I knew, they asked if I was a believer. No, I'm just curious, since my first encounter with Tibetans last year, I've read everything I can about the Tibetans, their culture, religion and history.