The next Bali: can Sumba in Indonesia marry tourism with tradition?

In a far-off corner of Indonesia is a hot, dusty island half frozen in time. Its towering grass-roofed houses and rare birds, beautiful horses and deadly staged battles, along with its ancient animist religion, make a visit to Sumba seem like a step back into the distant past.

But change is coming to this mystical isle. It may appear isolated, in Indonesia's remote southern Nusa Tenggara chain, but Sumba is close to Australia and plans are afoot for Bali-style development.

In Prai Yawang, a village in Rindi district, a group of elderly men sit in the shade, smoking and chewing sirih pinang (betel nut). In the village yard stands a tall, pointed, grass-roofed uma ndiawa, or house of the spirits. This is the type of architecture that visitors most associate with Sumba and, once, special objects would have been stored by shamans in the roof (it's possible some relics are still there; only shamans are allowed to enter). There is an area in front of the uma ndiawa, known as the katoda, where ordinary people are allowed to offer up prayers to their ancestors.

The men - among them Kuapa Rihi, who wears a turban and says quietly that he thinks he is about 70 - are here for a ceremony that no one will explain but which is expected to last for hours, possibly all night. The mysterious ritual has its roots in Marapu - a form of ancestor worship that about 10 per cent of islanders still practise. Some of the men speak only Bahasa Sumba, the native language of the island. A few of them are respected shamans who, they claim, are able to read the future.

Officially, most of the islanders are now Christian; Indonesians must register as belonging to one of five recognised faiths, and Marapu, which means "that which is not seen", is not among them. There is considerable pressure to convert and, in the process, older people fear that Sumba's unique traditions are being lost.