BLOOD AND THUNDER

AT midnight, the howls on the hilltop begin. Loud, urgent cries thrown into the darkness. Once, twice, the call is given, then from the sea comes a faint reply: 'Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoooo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hooo!' The old priests on the hilltop shake their feathered head-dresses and nod: Nyale, Goddess of the Sea, is coming to shore. The Pasola can begin.

There is no other festival in Indonesia quite so bizarre as the Pasola; no island quite so curious as Sumba, where the festival takes place. to the south of the Nusa Tenggara, the islands trickling east of Bali, Sumba lies remote and undeveloped, caught inan eddy of unique animist culture. In an archipelago of extraordinary islands, Sumba is the touchstone: symbolic of all their strangest rites and customs, the last outpost of their wildest traditions.

In the days when it was called Sandalwood Island, Sumba attracted a host of Chinese, Japanese, Arab and Malay traders. But once the sandalwood had disappeared, Sumba sank into obscurity, too distant, too poor and probably just too weird to interest the rulers. It was only in 1912 that a colonial administration was installed, and that was indirectly, with local rajas still wielding most of the power. When Indonesia gained independence, it took six months for the news to arrive.

Even the missionaries failed to make inroads here. Neither Islam nor Christianity has eroded Sumba's ancient Merapu religion and traditional culture. Buffalo, pig and dog are still sacrificed at funerals, and lengths of priceless tie-dyed ikat cloth are buried in massive stone tombs. Little in life or death has changed. Isolation, masking the island like a shroud, has preserved its deepest, darkest rites.

You could hardly call it a busy place, but at certain times of the year there's something that still lures thousands of visitors to Sumba: the Pasola. Held in four different locations in the west of the island a few days after the full moons of February and March, the Pasola is an extraordinary enactment of the island's unique religion. Among Indonesia's many animist festivals, the Pasola ranks head and shoulders above the rest, its danger as intense as its drama.

Literally meaning 'throw spear', the festival centres around a jousting match on horseback between villages representing the rival forces of the Lower and Upper Worlds. Symbolically, this is a battle to keep the balance between between the Merapu, gods of the sky above, and Nyale, the goddess of the watery world below. But in practice the purpose is rather more direct: its main aim is to draw human blood.