About six hours by bus (twice this amount of time in the wet
season) from the Luzon island town of Banaue, north of Manila,
the people of Sagada have devised a unique burial ritual
involving the placement of dead relatives into caves after
carefully preparing a hollowed out log. These coffins are carved
by the elderly before they die; if they are too ill or weak
their son or other close relative will do it for them. This
ritual involves pushing the bodies into the tight spaces of the
coffins, and often bones are cracked and broken as the process
is completed. After the deceased are put inside these coffins
they are then brought to caves high in the cliffs where they
join the coffins of other ancestors. The Segada people prefer to
be buried in the cliffs than to be buried in the ground and have
been doing this for more than 2,000 years. In some caves
hundreds of coffins are lined up, and unfortunately tourists are
unregulated in this area, some have even taken some of the bones
as souvenirs. If you do visit th