Availability and attitudes towards sky burial tourism
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 13 Aug, 2023
- |
Let’s start with your first question – Has it been banned in China?
A: China has tried to ban them, but some people keep doing it anyway.
A year ago, the Chinese government sought again to ban these burials
as tourist sites — this is legislative stuff that apparently doesn’t
stick. Over the years, there have been gaps in this protection. But
now Tibetans are allowed to regulate sky burials, yet some tour guides
and adventure junkies don’t give a good goddamn and continue to
return.
Can It Be Done In Mongolia?
A: As you said, it’s very hard to distinguish between information for Mongolia and the Mongolia region. This information may help, Why Sky Burials Are Vanishing in Mongolia – suggesting that this activity is decreasing.
Are local people in the ethnic groups that practice sky burial usually ok with sky burial tourism?
A: There are mixed opinions on this – some will welcome you with open arms, while others are just not happy. Hopefully this explains the difference generally in attitudes;
Western attitudes toward death are vastly different from Eastern, especially Tibetan. Most Tibetans are Buddhist, which has a strong focus on the teachings of impermanence, expecially of the body. Tibetans understand that death is a natural and normal thing, inevitable for all of us. In Western society however, we keep our elderly and dying on life support, respirators, all manner of medications, just to stave off death for a little longer, instead of understanding that it is natural and a part of being a human on this planet. We will do anything to avoid death, and even after death, we pump the bodies formerly occupied by our loved ones full of chemicals in order to mimic the appearance of life. Death to a Westerner is something evil, horrible, and ultimately terribly unpleasant- we live in a culture that does everything it can to deny human mortality. To Tibetans, death is very much the opposite, just as natural as birth, and not something to treat as the end of the world.
Because of these mixes in opinions, those who practise sky burial may not welcome tourists to do the same.
It’s an odd topic to try and find information on – but hopefully this may give you some leads.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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