The Hidden Mystical Village in Bali, TRUNYAN

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 ).

We got into a small boat. No one was there beside our small group, I could only hear the sound of crickets and ourselves. The rain started to fall. The mist was chasing behind, making the atmosphere more chilly. We met another group who departed before us and waving happily to them. We crossed the lake for about 45 minutes.

A view of Mount and Lake Batur, Kintamani. It's where we took a rest before driving down to Trunyan. 

The misty and serene Lake Batur 

Another group of tourists we met on the way to the village

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.

Skulls from different ages are neatly arranged 

The cemetery  

The Taru Menyan Tree

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. "