Trunyan Village Of Bali, Indonesia Stock Image

Trunyan – or Terunyan – is one village where the Bali Aga or Bali Mula (meaning initial or original) people reside. Its distant location on the eastern shore of Lake Batur almost conveniently secludes them from contemporary influences. Though it has attracted the attention of what has been termed ‘dark tourism’.In Trunyan, the dead are sailed ceremoniously in canoes to be left decaying overground in an isolated place separate from the parent village. Trunyan cemetery rests on the shores of a vast caldera lake and is guarded by an ancient banyan tree that the village was named after. The grand Taru Menyan tree (some frankincense or olibanum type), locally nicknamed ‘fragrant tree’, as it bears the power to absorb the putrid smell of decomposing corpses. The cemetery is 15-minute boat ride away from the village itself.