Ancient Rites Highlight Visit to Island of Sulawesi : Elaborate village funerals and hillside burial sites make Indonesia’s Tana Toraja memorable.

All that was missing was Indiana Jones.

The bones were there, heaped in headless piles. The skulls had been removed and arranged in neat double rows, or placed in shadowy corners where they gave a decorative touch to the gloom. Jumbled about were intricately carved wooden coffins, rotting and broken, some shaped like animals, others with prows like Viking ships.

The forest--palm trees, vines, groves of arm-thick bamboo-grew to the lip of the cave in the steaming, saturated air. Above the carnage soared a dome of jagged limestone, curving toward a black void. Half a dozen little girls stood giggling as they watched us picking a path through their gruesome playthings. What to us was incredible and macabre was commonplace to them.

We were in the Tana Toraja (“Land of the Toraja People”), a rich and fertile region surrounded by an imposing mountain range deep in the interior of southern Sulawesi, the Indonesian island separated from Borneo on its west end by the Makassar Strait.

For thousands of years, the Torajans lived isolated from the outside world, developing an intricate culture that--despite the ever-increasing incursions of new technologies, religions and outsiders since the turn of the century--remains deeply embedded in the collective psyche.

For the Torajan children, the dead, even in their less corporeal manifestations, were as much a part of everyday life as the rice fields that fill their valleys and the rugged peaks that surround them.

They had raced like mountain goats up the slippery path to the cave while we stumbled and clutched at branches and our clothing accumulated layer upon layer of mud. When we arrived they were waiting, eyes bright with mischief. They’d done this before but still delighted in Western reactions to their ancestors’ burial place.

To reach this remote area, we had driven five hours east from Parepare on the coast, ascending to 5,000 feet on a perilous 1 1/2-lane highway past the towns of Sidrap and Enrekang, several rural villages and deep gorges, until finally we breached the mountain wall, beyond which lay a verdant valley. But even this Shangri-La had its down side, and here it was: a climate hot as Hades and a road system full of potholes.

And tourists. During the traditional holiday months of July and August, busloads of visitors from around the world pour into the valley in the fervent hope of horning in on a local funeral. It’s like a gigantic convention of ambulance chasers.

What they are seeking is the celebratory send-off of a high-caste Toraja-- a man or woman of the former nobility, the class that now owns the tour buses and rice fields. In days of old, besides nobility, there were three other classes: free farmers, the working masses and, lastly, the slaves--who sometimes had the dubious honor of accompanying their master to the great beyond.

The Dutch put an end to slavery in the early 1900s, but no one has yet curtailed the Torajan sacrificial slaughter of water buffalo and pigs, which symbolizes the release of the deceased’s soul and the repayment of gifts that he or she had made on similar occasions.

If they’re lucky, that’s what the tourists will see . . . and a great deal more. When a high-born Toraja dies, the body remains in a brightly wrapped wooden coffin until the funeral takes place. This may be months or even years later due to an elaborate process that includes building a rambling, two- and three-story “village” in the burial field that will house the deceased, along with hundreds of family, friends and villagers during the celebration. According to tradition, during the time the house is being built, the deceased’s spouse is supposed to stay with the body and remain at home.

Nearby the burial field are huge stone megaliths, mossy with age, to which generations of water buffalo have been tethered over hundreds of years of slaughter. The funeral preparations proceed slowly, and when at last they are complete, the date may be postponed time and again until most of the far-flung relatives--businessmen who’ve moved to Jakarta, sons and daughters in college--can return for the elaborate rites and the most important moment in every Toraja’s “life”: when his or her soul is launched back to the stars, or, in the Torajas’ eyes, their roots.

On that day, the new guest houses fill with neighbors, friends and villagers. Buffalo are tied up, pigs and chickens are penned, immense quantities of food are prepared. And the celebration begins.

Dirges moan through the heavy, hot air, and dances of mourning are performed for the body, which is “sleeping” in its house until sacrifices release its spirit. Gifts repaying old debts are collected and carefully recorded. On succeeding days, the animals will be killed and eaten--the greater the quantity, the greater the family’s honor.

The entertainment includes buffalo fights, where the great beasts crash horns until one turns tail and takes off for the rice fields. Kick boxing is another favorite event, with dual matches often degenerating into free-for-alls that leave men senseless on the ground . . . not unlike the effect of the fermented sugar-palm-juice drink called tuac , which is served throughout the festivities in hollow lengths of bamboo.

After the celebrating has ended, the body is removed from its house in the village and interred in a nearby mausoleum. In earlier times, the body was laid to rest in a vault carved high in a limestone cliff. Lifted by strong and agile men who clambered up rickety bamboo ladders, the body was sealed with other departed members of the family along with personal objects that would accompany it to the “other world.”

In the door of the tomb would be placed a tau tau --a large wooden effigy of the deceased, whose painted white eyes would gaze over the valley and recall for all time the memory of the dead. Today, the century-old tau taus are still visible in certain parts of the Tana Toraja, most dramatically in the town of Lemo, and are a highlight of any trip to the region.

This is the ritual performed according to the traditional Torajan religion of Alak Tadolo, the “way of the ancestors.” Truth is that most Toraja today are Protestant in a predominantly Muslim country. Thus, it’s likely that a minister will slip some words from the Bible into the ceremony. Nor is it unusual to see, in the countryside, a small, houselike mausoleum with a Christian cross and plate-glass window, behind which stands a full-size wooden likeness of the deceased, dressed in modern clothes.

As I was walking down the road from the mausoleum, I spotted mammoth boulders with square-cut incisions designating tombs where items for the afterlife were arranged: umbrellas, sun hats, bottles of Coca-Cola.

Fortunate visitors will be able to observe a funeral or one of the other celebrations that punctuate Torajan life. But if not, even the everyday village activities can be fascinating to observe.

Assuming you’re on one of the package tours to Indonesia that includes Tana Toraja, as I was and as most visitors are, best advice is to take an early morning stroll, before breakfast, from your hotel in Rantepao, which is where most visitors stay overnight. Within a few blocks, you’ll see phalanxes of pedicabs waiting for customers, rickety frame houses with woven mat walls and small outbuildings where piglets poke their snouts over the fence, and bare-shouldered mothers wrapped in bright sarongs plunging squealing babies into outdoor cistern baths.

By the side of the road, women may be cutting wild greens for supper; old men sit shaded from the already intrusive heat, chewing the ubiquitous betel nut, and children in sparkling clean uniforms troop off to school. Bougainvillea--crimson, orange and purple--blazes everywhere, and Datura trees hang their bell-shaped, poisonous blossoms.

After the tour buses or minivans drop visitors off at the requisite tourist spots, such as the traditional villages of Londa and Lemo, I would recommend doing at least some exploring on your own. You’re likely to discover clusters of ancient houses and barns, and people attending to their daily lives, much as they have for generations. There may be rice fields, where groups of farmers hack enormous golden sheaves on the ground to loosen the kernels, and women gather and spread them on mats to dry in the merciless sun.

A trail up the hill may lead to a cave where aged skulls stare blankly over bright green valleys to distant mountains layered in mist. In the flat, flooded fields below, ragged scarecrows or tiny flags draped on string flutter to keep away the birds.

Our bus stopped at the village of Ke’te Kesu’, about three miles south of Rantepao, where we got our first look at the distinctive wooden Torajan houses. Above our heads soared what looked like a giant Cape Cod rowboat about to launch into space. This house and the ones next to it were once thought to represent the boats that brought the original ancestors to the land.

In any case, they are remarkable. At once graceful and hulking, the layered thatch roofs, with hundreds of interlocking bamboo drains, keep the typically three-room houses cozy and snug. The houses are raised well above the ground on stout legs, and every square inch is decorated with intricately carved and painted symbols.

Above the porch on many of the houses, a life-size wooden sculpture of a water buffalo head with real-life, broad-spanned horns hangs majestically. More horns--remnants of sacrificial animals--are fixed on a display pole that rises to the roof, and jawbones of pigs hang on the side of the house.

GUIDEBOOK

Indonesia’s Tana Toraja

Getting there: Garuda Indonesia Airways flies from Los Angeles to Denpasar, Bali, four times weekly, with stops in Honolulu and Biak. Round-trip air fare June-August is $1,450. You must change planes in Denpasar to continue to Ujung Padang, Sulawesi. Daily round-trip flights cost $184. Once in Ujung Padang, take Merpati Air for the one-hour trip to Rantepao in the Tanja Toraja region. Round-trip fare is $98.

Tours: I visited Tana Toraja as part of a Society Expeditions cruise. This company is no longer operating, but Abercrombie & Kent offers a luxury tour that includes Tana Toraja as an optional extension. Called “Cruising the Spice Islands of Indonesia,” the excursion uses twin-hulled cruise ships and inflatable zodiac boats to explore remote destinations. The seven-day cruises operate year-round and cost from $1,869 per person, double occupancy, for a standard cabin to $2,396 for a suite. For information, contact Abercrombie & Kent, 1520 Kensington Road, Oak Brook, Ill. 60521, (800) 323-7308 or (708) 954-2944.

Geo Expeditions, P.O. Box 3656-L7, Sonora, Calif. 95370, (800) 351-5041, offers four days in the Tana Toraja on its 18-day “Indonesia Cultures” trip. Other destinations are Bali and Java. Travel is by air and mini-van. The cost, not including air fare from California, is $2,490.

Select Tours International specializes in trips to Indonesia, and offers several packages to Tana Toraja. A four-day, three-night stay, not including air, costs $450 per person, and a 10-day trekking trip costs $800. Contact Select Tours at 817 Anita St., Redondo Beach 90278, (310) 374-0880.

Accommodations: Most hotels in Tana Toraja are in the town of Rantepao (where I stayed), the best of which offer comfortable, Western-style lodging in the Torajan motif. Figure on spending $85-$100 per room per night, plus a 21% room tax. Recommended are the Misiliana Hotel, Jalan Pao, Rantepao, Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi, Indonesia; Toraja Cottages, Jalan Pakubalasara, Rantepao; and the Toraja Prince Hotel, Rantepao. Tour packages typically include all accommodations and meals.

When to go: The best time to visit Tana Toraja is April-October when it is dry and hot. The rest of the year is less desirable because of the rain.

Passports valid for six months after date of entry are required, but visas are not needed for stays up to two months.

For more information: Contact the Indonesian Tourist Promotion Office, 3457 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 105, Los Angeles 90010, (213) 387-2078.