Toraja Tour it self devided into 2 area to explore. Where each area can spend a full day of your time. In the southern area you can visit artisans at Kete Kesu, a model Toraja settlements, produce bamboo carvings and other traditional handicrafts. The village itself has several well-maintained Tongkonan houses and rice barns. Visitors unsure about the propriety of tramping around someone’s village will be relieved to know that Kete Kesu has been converted into a living museum with the express purpose of displaying Toraja architecture and daily life. Other villages within sight of the roads, often sitting in an emerald sea of rice fields, display the Toraja penchant for baroque architectural adornment.
If the Toraja way of life is interesting, the way of death is a fascinating mix of rituals custom and spectacle. For the Toraja, the dead are as much a part of society as the living. At Lemo, cliffs rise precipitously from the rice fields like stonework condominiums. crypts carved with prodigious manual labor high into the solid rock house the mortal remains of Toraja nobility. Set amongs the crypts, the striking tau-tau, wooden effigies representing the deceased, look impassively on the world below.
At Londa, a network of coffin-filled caves reaches deep into the limestone hills. Visitors expecting a solemn, well-kept grotto are often shocked and disturbed by skeletons tumbling out of wooden coffins, skulls and bones arranged , to western eyes, according to some gruesome aesthetic. But the Toraja feels that since their ancestor’s souls are residing in heaven, ensuring continued fertility in farm and field, it is appropriate that their earthly remains be on display for the pleasure of honored foreign guests.
