Cremation Season

In Bali, there is a time for everything, "good days" for performing both everyday tasks and special religious ones. This year, July and August are the good season for cremations. In March of this year, a member of Ubud's royal family died. He was cremated in a huge community ceremony on July 15. Many common people were cremated with him, in a joint ceremony held in another part of town.

Here's a photo of the huge ladder used for the "pallbearers" to climb up to the cremation platform to get the ashes down afterward. The cremation platform for the royal deceased was so tall and heavy (it weighed in the tonnes) that it took 150 men to carry it. Hydro lines had to be taken down so that the platform could pass through the streets. Here's a photo of the giant ladder at dusk (on the left, beside an entrance to the Ubud temple courtyard). It is about three stories high, and made of bamboo.



I arrived five days after the huge cremation festival, which packed the streets of Ubud with Balinese and foreigners alike. I came in time for a further step in cremation ceremonies though. The people in the top photo and the one below are carrying the ashes of their loved ones down to the river to be scattered there. This procession was like a long parade, right down the street where my guest house is.



To finish off, here's a picture from the "front yard" of my guest house. Every morning, the family who runs my "b & b" sets out tea on my verandah, and then when I get up I have my breakfast there. It's fresh fruit with varying types of bread - toast with honey yesterday, and french toast this morning. Ahhh...

The boys in the photo are trying to get a kite up in the air - kites are really popular in Bali - just look up and you'll almost always see a few flying!