Struggling with each step to stay upright between the high boulders, I soon realize there is no easy path out. I am now well out of sight of the funeral, if in fact that’s what it even is. But I eventually wedge my way to an overlook between several of the jagged rocks and peer down upon the gathering. From this vantage point I see the dirt clearing and road approaching from afar. And on the landing there are about half a dozen men in plain clothes seated in a circle, including the two who stole the cameras. Behind them an open-pit fire blazes. Closest to where the boulders begin to ascend a large stone slab cuts into the mountainside, which was not before visible from the ground below.

The smooth stone is where the body must lie, where the monk slices open the deceased and eagles descend to tear off shreds of the caucus before returning skyward.

Still crouched and peaking out, I am startled and lose my footing when with full force a brown eagle swoons upon me. Its wingspan seems enormous, maybe four or five feet as it suddenly materializes from above. But thankfully sensing I am not prey, within a claw’s reach of my head it abruptly banks at ninety degrees and perches atop a nearby rock.

It is only now I notice the mountainside is covered with eagles. There must be a thousand of them. With the occasional exception of one hopping to reposition itself, in meditative stillness they occupy nearly every stony crest, a camouflaged breathing feature in the landscape.

Completely overwhelmed, I do not move. An accidental intruder in their nest, I have to settle myself in for the duration.

Over the next several hours, clusters of mourners sporadically arrive by both foot and SUV. No one stays long. They acknowledge the circle of hosts and then one by one approach the stone and kneel in prayer for a few moments.

Crouched low and propped against a high rock, I am able to achieve partial shade while maintaining a full view of the processions. The eagles watch too.

Then three monks approach the site. They are quite a distance away, and it takes them a good half hour to get to the mountain. Upon their reaching the foot of the cliff, the eagles begin to rouse and quiver.

If by telepathic command, all of the eagles then simultaneously rise in majestic flight.

They soon flap and swerve in gigantic circles overhead, around and around, whipping themselves into formation and darkening the overhead sky and sun.

The monks reach the mourners but walk passed them directly to the stone and begin to conduct a series of bows and prayers.

Finally they rise and pause in completion.

As if choreographed to their movement, the circling flock of eagles converges, and like taking form on a potters wheel, an upward spiraling cone emerges. The monks steadily exit. Departing to their cue, the now hive of birds accelerates towards the sun, and with the monks, eventually waning into the Himalayan horizon.

In July 1998 attending a sky burial in Lhasa was off limits to foreigners, Han Chinese and government officials. At a downtown café I meet three Chinese tourists, the two women of whom are better dressed for the mall than stone streets at perilous altitudes. I skeptically accept the offer to join them in their quest to glimpse the ritual, leery that their handbags and heels don’t make them the most stealth of folk.

A half hour later we approach the ceremonial site, which is a vast pebbled expanse. Beyond this and to the left is a hill of boulders, and on the right the rocks partially plateau. There are a few people gathered around a bonfire, they are too far to make them out or what they were doing, but I guess this is part of the ceremony. A dry dirt road from the right slowly rises to them from the hazy distance, and I barely discern two or three others approaching the incline by foot.

As we stroll closer I instinctively meander toward the back of the group and lower my head, perhaps more aware than they that we are exposed in plain sight. One of the women bursts with the observation of bones scattered amid the rocks around us. And I start noticing them too though they are more like shards and really not identifiable.

The women then start snapping photographs. Two men from the raised expanse have already barreled down the gravel slope, the first one within moments away before we can react. And once he reaches us, without a word he forcibly confiscates the cameras before hurrying back. His companion is stopped and watching purposefully from the near distance. They then nonchalantly return to their party.

My three Chinese companions go back in the direction from which we came to complain. They don’t stand a chance. Continuing my nonplussed swagger, I saunter off toward the boulders thinking that there is another way out from around the left.

I am the last one on the plane. There is an empty seat between the guy at the window and me. He scans me over as I sit down, noticing the folded China Daily that the stewardess just handed me. He asks me in English where I am from. I say New York and ask him, already feeling combative, the same question in return. My tone, while steady and polite, is tinged with hostile sarcasm as if transmitting the inanity of the question. I don’t want to make small talk, a fact he has not considered and seems unable or unwilling to observe, so he has already crossed a line.

He asks me if I am going to Beijing, and I tell him Shenyang. And he asks me if I learned Chinese, and I pretend not to understand. He repeats the question, and I again feign perplexity. This childish trick makes him abandon further attempts at practicing his English and instead proceed, now deflated, in his common mother tongue. We are now on the same field. If he wants to trivialize me he will have to play the game he has started. And he senses this. And I ask him question upon question, now relishing in practicing my Mandarin: what he does, why he is in Kyrgyzstan, and so on. And he soon loses interest and faces the window and closes his eyes. It is a long-winded way of saying it I know, but somehow more satisfying, and far more civil, than simply barking ‘fuck off.’