Torajaland Day 2

Got up at 5 AM this morning (but was awake since 4.15 since the muezzin started to sing at that hour…) and am now safely in Lembeh. I am a bit baffled to see Lembeh like this… usually everything is green but like in the South it hasn’t rained here for 4 months so there is more brown than green… sad… 🙁
But let’s start with my day 2 in Torajaland before I am too much into diving to think about Torajaland any more. 😉
We started the day in Lemo where you find traditional Toraja-houses (these are really old as the roof is already ‚greened‘ up)….

And the famous tau-tau.These wooden statues are a specialty of Toraja-land. The tombs are in the rocks (where you can see the doors) and for each deceased you see the wooden statues. From time to time the ancestors make a ceremony to redress them when the clothing is too weathered out. You can see that some of the tau-tau’s have nearly white dresses while others are still in bright colours.

One of the two is NOT alive (and the other one is Stan, my guide 😉 ).

An Alpha-Omega church. It is a christian church.

Again Toraja-houses in a village

The buffalo has a big role in Toraja-tradition. On the houses it is symbol for fertility.

This tree has a rather sad background as it is the ‚baby-tree‘. In it babies that didn’t have teeth yet are burried. The tradition says that the small children still need their mother to gorw up so the white juices of the tree are the symbol for the mothermilk. And they are burried in the part of the tree that is opposite of where the village is where they were born.

Toraja-architecture everywhere. This is a tomb with a Toraja-roofThese tau taus are in Londa, not so far away from Lemo. But the ones in Londa are older…

Again toraja-style cemetery

Who is complaining about chicken being raised in areas too restricted for them? 😉

This is a building errected for a burrial and it has been made into a restaurant afterwards.

And these are a bit scary as here the deceased are inside the caves. When you go in you see lots of skulls and bones in tombs that have decomposed… but outside there are tau taus again.

I found these tau taus rather funny as to me they look like they are watching a horse race.

Several coffins (still outside)

And here are two coffins inside

Along the Sa’dan river…

The driver was a real nice person too as for this pic he took a detour because he thought that I might like to take a pic there. 🙂 Dry rice-fields with water buffalos close to Rantepao.

And then Stan made me climb the hill up to this cross from where you usually have a nice view over the entire area. Usually… not when it hasn’t rained in months and the woods are burning… visbility was not really good. Unfortunately. On the way back down a young couple stopped me because the girl wanted a ppic with me. Not sure why… 🙂