Between Death And Rebirth The Way To The Sky

In Tibetan regions, people still practise the sky burial – a ceremony that entrusts the corpses to vultures.

- Boris Joseph

Hardly has the first light of dawn begun brightening the sky when the sound of creaking prayer wheels fills the kora (pilgrimage path) surrounding the monastery. Some shadows stand out: old Tibetan women shuffling along or monks in purple robes scurrying about after the first prayers of the day. Enveloping them are the landscapes of Amdo, one of the regions of Tibet now dissolved into the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan. Below, the town bathes in the smoke of juniper-tree offerings. Above the houses, the cold-scorched meadows wait for the yaks to return. Higher still, snow-capped mountains keep watch.

Outside the monastery, a winding dirt track climbs up to a little plateau embedded in a hillside. The multitude of prayer flags floating in the wind shows that the place is sacred. It was once chosen by the senior Rinpoche (or accomplished lama) to perform sky burials. Only he and his successors know how many of those ceremonies have been executed on that plot of land. One day, the set number will be reached, and the site, exhausted from being used as a bridge by all those souls, will be closed.