For the Torajan sect of Indonesia, death doesn't mean the end of life. It means the beginning of a new phase of another life. Members of the sect consider dead people as 'sick' people, who are not dead. A population of nearly half a million here believe in life after death and they observe some death practices that the outer world would find utterly horrid. They feed the dead, take them out of their coffins and actually hang out with them!

Two or three weeks after a death, a funeral is held where even tourists are allowed to click pictures and are served tea, coffee and snacks. Buffaloes are killed as a form of respect. Sect members then take the body home, then into the family’s ancestral building, a nearby rice barn, and then finally to the funeral tower.

Members then cry and summon at least 50 young men to seize the bamboo poles on which the bodies are mounted. These men then chant their way around the field. Once the chanting is over, they start a water fight - with the bearers drenching each other - and with the guests, with water from plastic cups.

There is then a second funeral called ma’nene’, where the family fills up the ancestral tomb with snacks and cigarettes. There is also a rare practice called ‘dipatadongkon’ where only the upper class families from the sect bring the dead and prop up the body at their home.

They then mummify the body with a solution of formaldehyde and water. And that's how they stay for years.