Prize fighting cock at the Sunday market...

Arriving in Makassar Sulawesi I wasted no time in getting out of the city.

After a long overnight bus on wretched roads that snaked up into the mountains I arrived in the cool dawn light of Rantepao, the biggest town in Torajaland. I want to capture the rolling hills, wildlife, and rural feel that Wallace so enjoyed during his collecting trips in Sulawesi. I also want to learn more about the Toraja people.

As I?m finding out in Indonesia, exotic cultures are almost as numerous as the exotic species that thrive here. That being said Torajan culture is truly unique. Living in the interior people in upland Sulawesi often grew up in isolation from one another and developed close familial clans and belief systems. People cultivated rice fields, wealth was centered on buffalo, a caste system prevailed, and animism beliefs focused on ancestor worship, or aluk. With a wave of Dutch missionaries in the early part of the 20th century, and waves of tourism in the latter part of the century Torajan cultural has gone through some transformations. Today churches and funky tongkonan houses decorated with buffalo horns stand side by side. Tourist hotels have popped up in Rantepao, but just outside of town you can get lost in ancient mazes of rice fields. Essentially, the rituals of the past swirl together with those of the present.