Greetings to all here in #saturdaymemories. I hope we all doing great here. It's my pleasure to partake again in this contest, initiated by @olga.maslievich. Thank you for this unique idea, "The Unique Find for Steemgeography".
As I traveled all around the Philippines in time, a lot of wonderful and amazing places to be proud of. But being a traveler, you could also hear different stories and history in a certain place that could make your hairstrand grows quickly. I find this place in Sagada when having tour with my friends for the past years where a trail through tropical vegetation leads to a hundreds of wooden coffins dangle and secured to a sheer cliff face and caves. It is located in Sagada, Mountain Province.
For more detailed references, please visit here:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hanging-coffins-of-sagada Source
While having a long walk and a trekking, we were really amazed of the fresh environment, surrounded by tall trees, different kinds of plants, and all, and it was really an amazing place I could tell, not until we passed by on a certain spot of cemetery where heroes being buried, we called it "Libingan ng mga Bayani", or National cemetery. It is a resting place for Philippine military personnel from privates to generals who served during World War II, but it eventually became designated as the official place of burial for deceased Philippine presidents, national heroes, patriots, National Artists and National Scientists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libingan_ng_mga_Bayani Source
After we passed by in that area, it felt a bit creepy, though we are in a group, but it's just unusual to be that way. So we continued our long walks and while being with the tour guide, a lot of questions and why's from us and he just explained us thoroughly. This was the time that he told us, that if we reach the certain place with the hanging coffins, we had to be quite for the due respect of everything. And we kept on wondering and imagining everything of what it looked like. So this is it, the long wait is over. It is so unusual to see hanging coffins instead of burying it into the ground.
The people of Sagada follow unique burial ritual. The elderly carve their own coffins out of hollowed logs. If they are too weak or ill, their families prepare their coffins instead. 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.
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. In addition to this, one of the reasons they hung coffins is because of their beliefs that the higher the dead were being placed, the greater chances of their spirits reaching a higher nature in the afterlife.
For more detailed references, please visit here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagada Source
A lot of travel experiences that I have been, but of all those times, I could say, that it was really a creepy adventure experience in that part of Sagada. I find it unique, because it is not likely to hang coffins or to have a hanging cemetery after all. We did not expect that we could witness and see things like that. I am still having goosebumps when I think about that place right now.
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Thank you for passing by. I hope you discover something unique too during my travel. And if you plan to find and visit that place, and discover how unique it is, just be sure to be with someone or with friends, and be prepared for yourself also, 'coz you might feel something strange as I was before.
I would like to invite my friends to have your entries now @jenny018, and @fruityapple00, and to partake your Unique Find for Steemgeography.
Always,
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