Except for the Duoduoka Burial Stage where the skulls of the dead are kept and placed on the wall nearby, in other areas of Tibet where the sky burial custom is practiced, the whole human body is fed to the vultures, with not a single part spared.

There are two gates respectively on the west and south of the Duoduoka Charnel Ground's courtyard. The west gate is for living human beings, while the one on the south is where the bodies are carried in. The bungalow on the north is exclusively for the monks who carry out the religious sky burial ceremonies, and inside the rooms are some religious scriptures and figures.

Beneath the courtyard of the charnel ground is a cellar, whose floor and walls are built of stones, and which stores Buddha figures, the Tripitaka (the three major parts of Buddha's teachings), and religious tools and sacrifices.

In the center of the Duoduoka Charnel Ground lies a sky burial pool of about four square meters made of small cobbles. On the pool's north stands a rectangular stone about 60 cm above the ground. The stone is used to hold the bodies in sky burials. A pole more than ten meters tall with some prayer flags hung on top stands outside the charnel ground's south gate.

The winter here can be extremely cold, sometimes falling as low as 37-Celsius degrees below zero. However, no matter how frozen the body is, following a night in the sky burial pool, it will surely unfreeze the next day, thus ensuring a smooth sky burial. Nobody yet can explain this phenomenon. This mystery has made the Duoduoka Charnel Ground even more famous, even attracting some people from neighboring counties to choose it for their own death.

Author: Jeff