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In the Philippine municipality of Sagada, the Igorot people suspend coffins on wooden beams in the face of a cliff, both to protect them from floods and animals and to bring them closer to heaven. In a tradition more than 2,000 years old, the elderly fashion their own coffins out of hollow logs, to be fitted into place by their survivors. The practice is now slowly dying away.
“It’s like returning back to where you came from, in the foetal position in the womb,” Igorot guide Siegrid Bangyay told the BBC in 2018. Though the last cliff burial had taken place in 2010, she said, she would one day like to take a place on the cliff herself — changing from “a tourist guide to a tourist attraction.”