As I am preparing to write about Mongolia I remembered having come close to a sky burial in Tibet about 20-25 years ago. To understand better, what I've seen in Mongolia recently, I looked closer at old pictures, I've taken, and my travel notes as well as some newer publications on the internet.
It happened in Gyantse, where I had been hiking in the mountain outside the township. Not very far away, though, as you might see in the pictures. Going uphill I had already been taking deep breaths and my heart was punding when a young woman of about 18 years with rosy cheeks rushed past to retain one of her sheeps. On top of the ridge she went to the right, whereas I took on to the left a little (no, quite some time) later.
First I saw a vulture sailing and the some vultures having trouble to fly higher up, lined up on a cliff (to far apart to show them all, as I've seen five). I climbed down to a rocky hillock an saw some red fluid on the ground. On a caved in rock there were white marks like bones being scaped. And here had been a shelter for a guard. I watched acouple of men climbing down the hillock, which I did later. They had some sacks, which they heaved onto a cart and then moved it away. I guess that the sacks contained the bones of a diseased as a dog came later and yelped while sniffing at the sport, where one of the sacks had touched the ground.
Sky burial isn't limited to Tibet and Mongolia; Mongolia had adopeted the practice with the advent of Vajrayana Buddhism [1]. The Tibetan word for this funeral practice is bya gtor, meaning bird-scattered. In Tibet the ground might be too hard to dig a grave due to rocks or because of being frozen, which also means the remains might not decompose. As the Buddhists believe in the transmigration of the soul, there is no need to preserve the empty vessel. Only high lamas would be cremated as fuel is scarce.
More on the topic is already discussed in the Wikipedia article, but I'd like to direct you to the article of Pamela Logan, who had witnessed sky burials [2]. Another witness of „The Sacred Solemn Funeral Rite of Tibet“ is Mondo Secter of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia (Canada) [3]. If you want to look at pictures, please think before, if you really want to see them, you could go to some Chinese pages [4] or simply google pictures concerning sky burial or 天葬.
I know, I should have reread the Bardo Thödol or „The Tibetan Book of the Dead“ by Walter Evans-Wentz (1878–1965), which is somewhere in an unmarked cardbox in my attic, and this looks like the place where the Ark of the Covenant has been stored accoring to Steven Spielberg [5]. However, one could download a newer English translation by Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup [6]. Though you might find out that the book doesn't mention sky burial, it contains valuable background information to the Vajrayana funeral rites.
Links and Annotations:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial
[2] https://www.pamela-logan.com/culture/survival-and-evolution-of-sky-burial/
[3] http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/TibPages/tib-burial.html
[4] https://k.sina.com.cn/article_6270609909_175c1e9f500100luvj.html and https://www.storm.mg/lifestyle/732635
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raiders_of_the_Lost_Ark „In a large warehouse, the Ark is crated up and stored among countless other crates.“
[6] https://holybooks.com/the-tibetan-book-of-the-dead-2/
PS. All pictures have been scanned from analogue originals.
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