I actually did get lost among the crowd at one point, but found my aged parents again. 'Twas a good thing we all had our mobiles with us, too. Anyway, the procession was amazing, and since you're not likely to see another one when/if you visit Bali yourself - the last time they had a ceremony on this scale was about thirty years ago - I shall do my best to get some sense of the scale and movement across. As (I think) noted in an earlier entry re: Bat Cave temple, cremation ceremonies in general come in two sizes. If you're poor, then you and your village wait about five years, save the money (and keep the bodies underground) and then burn everyone in style and saved-up expense. If you're rich, you still have to wait a bit - for the holy men to tell you the perfect day - but it's a matter of weeks or months, not years. If you're the head of Balinese royalty, well. You get what's hidden under the pic spam below. Though it wasn't only the head of said family being escorted to the hereafter; the fifteenth of July was declared to be a perfect day for cremation in general, so all over Bali there were some, and in Udub, too, several families honored their dead this way along/ahead of the Royal procession. The whole ceremony is completely unlike a Christian burial in that there is an aura of joy and celebration in the air, everyone smiling and cheering, including the people carrying the very elaborate towers, animals and other effigies about to be burned, the heaviest of which weighed over 11 tons.

( See for yourselves... )