It’s an 8am start for us this morning as we’re leaving Banaue and heading further north to Sagada. Compared to yesterday’s epic drive it’s only a couple of hours so should be a breeze.
The people of Sagada follow a unique burial ritual. The dead are placed inside their coffins (sometimes breaking their bones in the process of fitting them in), and the coffins are brought to a cave for burial.This ancient custom starts with a burial gathering led by the deceased’s family and relatives. The burial includes days of mourning, butchering of livestock, and preparing the body for entombment. Thereafter, a family member caries the body to the cave or cliff where the coffin is waiting. It is believed that carrying the dead would transfer luck, blessings, and talents to the family. Instead of being placed into the ground, the coffins are hung either inside the caves or on the face of the cliffs, near the hanging coffins of their ancestors. The Sagada people have been practicing such burials for over 2,000 years, and some of the coffins are well over a century old.
We start our tour of Sagada by trekking down to the Lumiang Burial Cave.
The Lumiang Cave is home to 100 ancient coffins. Stacked one on top of the other, these coffins form an eye-catching wall at the entrance of the cave that rises nine layers high. It has been estimated that the oldest coffins are around 500 years old. The coffins were placed at the entrance to protect them from the elements, but in the same token, so they could receive daylight that wards off evil spirits that may disturb these souls’ eternal rest.
The coffins are very strange, as they are quite small for a full-grown adult. It’s believed the corpses were laid in the coffins in a fetal position. It was done so that the deceased could exit this life the same as they entered. Most of the coffins are designed from a hollowed-out section of a tree trunk, with a lid firmly secured to the coffin by means of a rudimentary, but effective latch. A few others are thinner and longer, and consist of wooden planks nailed together. Some coffins display a rather plain design, while others exhibit stylized carvings of lizards, which symbolize longevity and fertility.
We return to our van and drive to our next stop, Echo Valley where the coffins are suspended on the rocky cliffs. It’s a very steep trek down with a lot of steps of different sizes – thank goodness for knee supports.
The reason the coffins were hung was due to the belief that the higher the dead were placed, the greater chance of their spirits reaching a higher nature in the afterlife.
The tradition of entombing the dead in caves is still alive today among the Applai people, a sub-group of the widespread Igorot ethnic group that is responsible for the signature hanging coffins of Sagada. However, it’s a costly burial, as custom dictates that chickens, pigs, and carabaos be sacrificed during the funeral ceremony in an amount that reflects the status of the deceased.
It feels a slightly macabre and intrusive watch. Visiting from a culture where our coffins are buried below ground it’s hardly surprising. The coffins look precarious, fragile and exposed but there is no hiding of death here, it’s a fact of life and acknowledged in a very public way.
We return back up from the bottom of the valley and go in to town for lunch. Brownie has roasted vegetable pasta and I have an open toasted tuna sandwich we’re starving. The main road of the town is down and steep hill and we walk back up to our hotel stopping to buy t shirts on the way at £2.50 each.
After our trek we take a snooze, exhausted after our exertions.
There’s been a drop in temperature after the sun goes down and when we go out to dinner we need to wear trousers and Down jackets – we remind ourselves that we are in the Philippines. We go for dinner at Log Cabin, a faux ski chalet. Brownie pork steak, green beans & sticky rice. I have a delicious mushroom pasta. Restaurant is full of young people ignoring each other and staring at their phones. We feel like we’re skiing and there’s snowman decorations around to celebrate Christmas. We return to our guesthouse and there’s a log fire roaring in the fireplace!!
On the move again tomorrow so time to repack what little we’ve unpacked.
Leave a Reply