Rico Hizon

Planting, cultivating and harvesting rice is back-breaking work, but the modern Ifugao who live below the terraces still carry on the tradition of their ancestors. After preparing a bed, planting water-soaked seedlings and draining the pools, they must tend to their unique walled terraces, which require near-constant care. To do so, they haul mud and hard, round stones up the slopes from the river to reinforce the steep walls.

The Filipino tribe that hangs its dead from cliffs (Image credit: Steve Paton) In the Philippines, the Igorot people practice an ancient burial ritual where the elderly carve their own coffins and the dead are hung off the side of a cliff. Philippines, hanging coffins, Igorot The remote village of Sagada is nestled in the Cordillera Central mountains of northern Luzon, the Philippines’ largest and most populated island.

According to Bangyay, there are far fewer hanging-coffin burials in Sagada than in previous generations. Yet, she strongly believes the tradition will continue. In fact, she herself hopes to one day enter the afterlife this way, transforming, as she says, from ‘a tourist guide to a tourist attraction’.