There are four things that Tanah Toraja, located high in the hills of Sulawesi, is known for:

• Its elaborate funeral rituals.  All of the resources of the community go into preparation for funerals, which is why the culture is nicknamed "The Culture That Lives to Die." At funeral celebrations, we've seen several hundred water buffalo slaughtered, not to mention two or three times that many pigs, so that the village grounds ran with blood.

• Its burial customs.  After an adult dies, his body is often kept in in his house for a year or more, embalmed, sewn into a red funeral casing, and conspicuously positioned. Adults are subsequently "buried" in cliffside caves, guarded by effigies of themselves. Infants are sewn into the hollow trunks of trees.

• Its architecture.   Its houses are shaped rather like overturned boats and decorated with intricate geometric carvings.

• Its religious beliefs.  Unlike most of Indonesia, which is Moslem, and unlike Bali, which is its own blend of Hinduism and animism, Tanah Toraja is Christian.

Our journey to Tanah Toraja began with a Merpati Nusantara flight that landed atop a cliff. Eventually we were met and taken down to the first of the villages we were to visit. We promptly learned that although we had a round-trip air ticket, we had no return flight to Ujung Pandang, the major city of Sulawesi (formerly called the Celebes). We shrugged. It used to be you could only get up to Tanah Toraja by a grueling eight- or nine-hour road trip, and we didn't mind going back down that way—which we did, enabling us to see a lot more of the island.

But, in the meanwhile, we had this new and unusual culture to explore.