Burning Man Ubud

Day 143 - Ubud

Six days in Ubud could be considered excessive for a traveller on a timescale such as mine. I wasn't here to align my chakras in a wellness retreat so time was essence-y. But the traveller grapevine had thrown up a tantalising possibility. Just like the rocket festival in Laos I couldn't pass up the opportunity to experience something actually authentic. In this case the funeral of a local notable. He had been a major and, crucially, quite popular. This popularity ensured it was no simple coffin for him. Oh no, his earthly remains would be deposited in a big cow. Then set on fire. These are good things I was informed by the landlady of the guesthouse where I had been permitted to return. It was good to be back with a friendly crowd where everyone got along well. Well except that was for two lads. One was Ukrainian and the other was, no prizes for guessing, Russian. The chill between them was like a Siberian winter or like the bitterness in a Ukrainian house whose roof had been blown off by a hypersonic missile. People thronged the main street in Ubud so Vicenzo and I found a vantage point up on a ledge from where we could see the cow coming. You could separate the voyeurs from the funeral participants by their dress. There was a group of women in orange with pink sashes and another in lace and purple. There were guys with black and white check sarongs (kemben in Balinese). Further along some were in head-to-toe check like old-fashioned convicts, if old-fashioned convicts also wore elaborate headdresses and were issued spears.

They all milled about and we had the uncertain wait of foreign countries. Even if I asked one of the participants and they understood me one suspects the answer to my question would have been 'it starts when it starts'. But, eventually, start it did. 'Funeral queens' (not their official title) were first carried through on litters. Then drummers, cymballers and other assorted musicians. Then the man himself.

Well, I assumed he was in the cow at this point, hard to be sure. He was followed by a gigantic I-don't-know-what. A 9-level pagoda sat atop a platform. It was decorated with all manner of demonic heads and colourful flamed licking from the sides. The structure was carried by rows of men who let out a mighty grunt of exertion each time the procession moved forward a few metres. I suppose I could research what all this meant. Hold on. So for the Balinese cremation ceremony a patulangan is made to cremate the body in. It is in the form of a bull or a temple-like structure. Seems we might have another body here then. I don't know which one the major was in. Ah, ok, neither. He gets put in at the cremation ground (good name for a football stadium by the way). The patulangans disappeared off down the road leaving me unsure what to do next. I tracked them down a while later to witness the start of the beleganjur music.

This is a battle song symbolising the soul's fight with the evil underworld as it tries to reach the worry-free upper realm. Once this was done proceedings seemed to halt. There was no way to know what would happen next. The mid-afternoon sun beat down and things had gone at a leisurely pace so far so I wandered off in search of beer and shade. As I made my way back to the cremation ground an hour later there was a smell of burnt major in the air. The crowds had gone and where once there stood a proud bull there was now only ashes. Apart from a guy with a rudimentary flamethrower trying to reduce what was clearly a human torse and head to its constituent atoms. Well done.