Tana Toraja and Their Unique Culture

The road from Makassar to Toraja runs along the coast for about 130 km's and then hits the mountains. After the entrance to Tana Toraja at the market village of Mebali one enters a majestic landscape of giant, gray granites and stones and blue mountains afar that form a sharp contrast with the lively green of the fertile, rain-fed terraces and the rusty red of the tropical soil. This is Tana Toraja, one of the most splendid areas in Indonesia.

Here, the nobility of Toraja are believed to be descendents of heavenly beings who came down by a heavenly stairway to live here on earth in this beautiful landscape.


And to keep up the energy of the land and its people, the Toraja people believe that these must be sustained through rituals that celebrate both life and death, which are attached to the agricultural seasons. Here rituals in connection with life are strictly separated from death rites.


Tana Toraja is quite simply unique. A cultural island, hemmed in by mountains on all sides, the Toraja prove there is life after death with their elaborate ceremonies. Take the beauty of Bali, the houses of the Bataks in Sumatra and the megalithic cultures of Sumba and you’re still not even close. Cave graves, hanging graves, tau tau (life-sized wooden effigies) of the dead and buffalo carnage every summer; it’s macabre but mesmerising. This is a world unto itself.



The land of the Toraja people, many notionally Christian but most in practice animist, is above all famed for their spectacular (and rather gruesome) burial rites. After a person's death, the body is kept, (often for several years ) while money is saved to pay for the actual funeral ceremony, known as tomate. During the festival, which may last up to a week, ritual dances and buffalo fights are held, and buffaloes and pigs are slaughtered to ferry the soul of the deceased to the afterlife (puya). The deceased is then finally buried either in a small cave, often with a tau-tau effigy placed in front, inside a hollow tree or even left exposed to the elements in a bamboo frame hanging from a cliff.

Tana Toraja has unique culture set in stunning scenery. Globalisation and tourism may have impact, but if you venture away from the tarmac roads you will find soon a way of life that has not changed much in the last 100 years.


One of the tradition is the ceremonial Rambusolo Tanah Toraja. Rambusolo ceremony is intended to honor the spirits of the dead and bring the world into the spiritual realm, that is, back to immortality with their ancestors in a resting place. The ceremony is often also called the completion ceremony of death, because the person who died had actually considered dead after the whole procession ceremony fulfilled. If not, then the person who died was only considered as a "sick" or "weak", so he's still treated like a living, which is laid on a bed and food dishes and drinks, even to talk.

Therefore, local people consider this very important ceremony, because perfection ceremony will determine the position of the spirits of the deceased, whether as a ghost haunting, ghost who reach the level of a god, or a patron god. So the ceremony Rambusolo become a "liability", the result in any way Tana Toraja people hold it as a form of devotion to the parents of those who have died.

The highlight of the show Rambusolo called Rante ceremony held in a special field. In this ceremony there are a series of rituals that always attract the attention of visitors, such as wrapping the corpse, placing ornaments of gold and silver thread on the coffin, and the corpse to the resort pengusungan

Interestingly, the buffalo slaughtered in a way that is very unique and is a characteristic of the people of Tana Toraja, namely to cut the neck of a buffalo with a single blow. Type of slaughtered buffalo buffalo was not unusual, but the albino buffalo (tedong bonga). They cost from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of rupiah per tail.