Nestled in the rolling green hills in remote Indonesia, wooden, angular houses peep through the clearings of lush forests that line the mountainous South Sulawesi region.

A thin mist blankets the steep ranges, rice paddies glisten in the sunlight, and smoke rises in the distance as a community goes about its daily life.

Day-to-day, its rituals are that of any typical community almost anywhere in the world. Children go to school and adults go to work, with sprawling, uninterrupted mountain views and clear skies. It's a scene that feels familiar, even if only to the imagination.

It is this lofty, peaceful region that the Indigenous peoples, the Toraja, call home.

Fundamentally, their lives are no different to those in the Western world, but there's one aspect that sets the Torajan culture apart from others.

Here, death and dying are handled differently.

To Torajans, death is not the end. It's an extension of life.

Warning: This story discusses death and dying which some readers may find distressing.

A physical confrontation with death

It's here in the landlocked regency of Tana Toraja that eight-year-old Nandira had her first encounter with death.

Growing up in suburban Melbourne, she had spent her life thinking death was something scary and foreign.

"To most people, death is scary, it's morbid, it's something that's taboo," she says.

"No-one really talks about it. It's sad."

But when her mother was told a family member had died in 2013, they ventured back to their roots in South Sulawesi.

It would be the first time Nandira would visit Tana Toraja — to attend the funeral of an uncle she had never met, and get to know her extended family.

What Nandira didn't know was that the trip would be a life-changing experience.

"I knew I was going to a funeral, but I didn't know it was going to be that elaborate, that bizarre," she recalls.

"When I got there and I observed everything, I was amazed, I was confused, but I also wanted to learn more about this culture.

Arriving in Tana Toraja and entering the family's tongkonan, a traditional boat-shaped house, Nandira was confronted with death almost immediately.

It had been over a week since her uncle had died, but when the family prepared to eat dinner, he was still treated as though he were alive.

Entering the room carrying a tray of fish, rice and spices, her aunty walked up to her husband, Nandira's deceased uncle.

He lay on a bed wearing a clean, ironed batik — a traditional shirt — while a picture of Jesus Christ gazed over them in the room with intricate designs painted on the walls.

It would seem alarming to some, but Nandira says the room smelt only of a faint hint of sandalwood.

"He was treated with herbal treatments. That's why the room didn't really smell. The body was preserved," she says.

Nandira's family tended to her uncle to maintain his body until his funeral could be held — because funerals for Torajans are no small feat.

Living amongst the dead

The elaborate death and funeral rites of Torajans aren't borne from religion — Dutch colonisation means the majority of the population is Christian, although a small percentage of people are Muslim.

Rather, dying, death and funerals in this part of Indonesia come down to cultural beliefs.