What places come to your mind when Bali is
mentioned? Kuta beach, Tanah Lot, and Ubud probably are on the top list. What
about Trunyan? Have you ever heard that name?
Trunyan is a village located near Lake Batur,
Kintamani subdistrict. This is a special interest destination for those who are
curious and fond of mystical or strange thing. What makes Trunyan “not an
ordinary village” is how the locals treat the “dead body”. Instead of being
buried or cremated, the corpses are only laid on the ground and guarded by
bamboo fence. The strange thing here is, though they are exposed to the air,
THE CORPSES ARE NOT SMELLY!
The sky looked pale. The sun was hiding behind
the clouds when my photography club partners and I drove down to the small dock
by the lake. The wind was blowing quite strong. In brief, it was overcast (
sometimes I wonder why writers must use many sentences just to describe one
word but now I’m doing it too, lol ). The road was small and rough with forest
on one side and cliff on the other side, therefore you must be careful ( jadi
please siapin sopir yang udah berpengalaman, yah kira kira yang selevel sopir
kopaja atau metromini gitu lah, lol ).
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A view of Mount and Lake Batur, Kintamani. It's where we took a rest before driving down to Trunyan. |
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The misty and serene Lake Batur |
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Another group of tourists we met on the way to the village |
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Trunyan Village |
We were accompanied by a local people to the
cemetery called Sema Wayah. Only the
people who died naturally, already married, single, and kids who had lost their milk teeth can be put here. Meanwhile, babies are put in Sema Muda, and people who died in an accident in Sema Bantas. A huge tree caught my
attention when I reached this place. Its name’s Taru Menyan ( Taru means tree and Menyan means fragrant ) and later became the
village name. The tree was the reason why the corpses were not smelly. It was
believed to be able to release a certain chemical that neutralize the rotten smell.
There
were lots of skulls neatly put below the tree. At first, I was doubt to take a look at
the corpses, but my curiousity won over my fear. I walked slowly to the bamboo
fence. There were several corpses with different death timing but none of them recently put at that
time, so all you can see were the bones of heads, hands and legs since the
bodies were covered by clothes. And yes, there wasn’t any smell except the humid ground because of the rain. Unfortunately, the rain was getting harder, so I
could only take several pictures in hurry.
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Skulls from different ages are neatly arranged |
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The cemetery |
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The Taru Menyan Tree |
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The corpse was covered by white fabric. It's a head beside the plastic bag. I usually remove unnecessary thing like the plastic, but obviously not for this case :) |
It wasn’t as frightening as I thought actually.
Yeah, you could call me weird but when I looked at the corpses, I wondered they
were once a human like us. Like a lesson in religions, whether you are beautiful
or not, rich or not, we will eventually become like that. And what’s anything left
to take beside the good that we done? Though in fact I’m not a
religious person, I couldn’t agree more. Well, let me end this post by a quote from Albert Enstein :
" Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. "
" Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. "
