Better not die while vacationing in Tibet. Their practices of dealing with the dead vary greatly from the traditional funeral and burial rituals we are accustomed to here in the West. Sky burial, or jhator as it’s known to Tibetans, is the practice of dismembering corpses on a mountaintop and allowing vultures to devour the remains.
A man known as a rogyapa, or breaker of bodies, systematically tears limbs from the torso of the body and flesh from the bones during the ritual. Then, he pulverizes the bones with a hammer before allowing the hungry vultures to dine. This procedure, while horrifying, does serve a purpose. It allows for quick and more thorough consumption by the scavengers.
Sounds morbid? Maybe to us. But in the Tibetan culture, this is the perfect way to dispatch a person’s body after death. Tibetans consider birds to be holy, and offering one’s body up for their sustenance is considered a high honor.