Mysteries of Trunyan
The village of Tunyan is located at the edge of Batur Lake, Kintamani. Getting to Lake Batur takes around two hours drive to the northeast of Denpasar along the main road to Buleleng and through Bangli Regency. This location can only be accessed by boat, and it takes around half an hour across the calm waters.
Trunyan is well known for their tradition of treating their dead. While most Balinese would hold a tradition of Ngaben, a term referring to a cremation of the dead, in Trunyan, that is not how they treat their dead. Trunyan has an area of cemetery in its sub-village, Kuban, where they lay their dead, not cremate it like what most Balinese do. The body will just be laid out in bamboo cages to decompose. Therefore, you can see many skulls and skeletons lies in the platform stone and anywhere around.
The Village of Trunyan has its own rule about where to put their dead. There are three tombs which prepared for three different kind of death. For those who died naturally, the body will be covered with white cloth, have some ceremony and finally put, not buried, under a big tree name Taru Menyan in a location named Sema Wayah. But if the cause of death is not natural like being killed, accident, suicide etc, the body will be put in a location named Sema Bantas. Children, baby, and unmarried person will be put in a location named Sema Muda.
There is also a custom that prohibit the women of Trunyan from going to the cemetery when a dead body is carried there. They believe that if a woman comes to the cemetery while corpse is being carried there, there will be disaster in the village.
Even though people here don’t bury their dead and just leave them in a natural way, the dead bodies don’t produce bad smells. Many people believe that it is due to the perfumed scents from a huge Taru Menyan tree growing nearby. Taru means ‘tree’ and Menyan means ‘nice smell’. The name of Trunyan as the name of the Village was also derived from these two words.
If you come to visit Trunyan, you will find many accessories sellers along the way. They offer you various kinds of beads necklace or wood bracelet. They all are cheap and would be a perfect merchandise for your family along with the story of a mysterious isolated Village in Bali, Trunyan.
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