Culture
Spiritual Skin
For centuries, indigenous tattooists working across Asia have marked human skin with powerful designs and symbols in their quest to signal ethnic identity and render the body sacred. Carried through life and onwards into death, these marks of humanity testify to an ancestral legacy that is in danger of gradually fading away.
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Travel and Adventure
A Pilgrim’s Progress
Follow five of Asia’s most majestic pilgrimages – from Japan’s snow country, to the mountainous vistas of Tibet and Sri Lanka, and trace religious passages through India and Turkey.
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Culture, Heritage
The Art of Eight Limbs
Muay Thaai, otherwise known as ‘The Art of Eight Limbs’, is Thailand’s form of boxing that makes lethal use of eight contact points of the body, including the hands, shins, forearms, knees and feet. It has become one of the primary reasons for martial arts devotees to visit the country – from the serious practitioner training for the next fight, to the casual tourist looking for a little physical conditioning between days on the beach.
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Heritage
The Ancestor of All Fights
Indian kushti is considered the predecessor of all wrestling. It is undergoing a revival despite the tug-of-war between tradition and modernity.
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Heritage
The Way of the Gods
Shinto is ‘the way of the gods’ and, just as it is for many mortals, sumo wrestling is a favourite pasttime. For nearly 2,000 years, sumo wrestlers have performed their martial art, first in intimate shrines, and then in stadiums before thousands of spectators. At least as early as the 3rd century AD, the wrestlers would perform complex rituals to purify both their body and their spirit, and then fight for the entertainment of the gods during the matsuri (religious festivals). It was a sacred act of ritual, not a sport.
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