Nepal's Sky Burial (BBC's Human Planet)
 

I've often heard the Tibetans have a practice where they leave the dead on the mountain for the vultures to eat away at the body. I saw an episode last night from BBC's Human Planet and this was the first time I saw a footage of it. It's deemed as good karma and a cycle of life. Apparently it's practiced in Nepal too.

pretty shocking from 5:02

I'd recommend checking out all 10 episodes...it's broken down into different habitats (much like Planet Earth) and gives quite a bit of insight on human's primal survival instincts.

ive watched the entire series

great documentary

I'm from Nepal and I've never heard about this.

This place must be really close to Tibet because of the altitude and because they're not speaking Nepali.

Anyway, the documentary looks sweet. I'm gonna check it out.

Lol i just read about this in anthropology class

i wonder if this makes the vultures extra predatorial on humans because they are used to feeding on the dead ones

check out this episode of river monsters - in a part of india theor tradition is to set the dead on fire and release them into the water. the catfish there have grown to ridiculous amounts and have started attacking humans because theyre used to eating human meat and its their preferred food of choice now
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Very cool

Yeap that's my guess. I meant to say Tibetans in my original post.

Imagine if not only a small community practising this but an entire town, I bet the vulture population would explode.

cool documentary

was anyone else disappointed they dident get to see the vultures attack the dead body?

was hoping for some crazy ass footage of em attacking

Planet Earth never showed the actual footage, but if you look around the internet you will find a full set that shows everything. In my opinion, it's very spiritual. If I remember correctly, the set of pictures I saw was of a person burying his best friend. He began by tying his neck to a pole. He then removed all his clothes and he began cutting up the body in order to expose the flesh and to attract the vultures. Then he sat back and watched while the shamans/monks(?) chanted and the vultures devoured the body. The most amazing part was the last series of pictures. When the vultures were done, they backed off and what was left was only pure bones. But it wasn't over yet. He had a special knife, which he cracked open the skull exposing the brain and the essence of what was left of his friend, and fed it back to nature.


Edit: Found it for you

WARNING: NSFW
The Tibetan Sky Burial Pictures | Best Gore

they are ethic Tibetans. We drove by a Sky Burial place when I went to Tibet a few years back, but I didn't get to walk around (didn't think it would be respectful anyways).

wow that was fucked, lol whats up with the jap chick in the banner of the link you posted

wonder if its real

those pictures actually wasn't as graphic as i expected..I thought it would be way worse..looks like it's true that they devour the flesh right down to the bones and seems relatively quick too. but yeah what a fucked up site for sure (sky burial is meant to be sacred and they add stupid ass captions)

x2, that was the first thing i saw. Wtf.

x3 i know ei, wtf

Srry guys, that was the first site that I saw with the set of pictures I described. The time that I did see those pictures it was on a more clean site. I was too lazy to look for another source ^^"

i remember this. pretty cool.


so i just checked 3 different sites.. and they all have different rankings of which cities were the highest in the world..?