Kalinga Batok Tattooing

In the Kalinga highlands, tattoos were earned marks, given to warriors and to women at set points in life, and the method has not changed: soot ink, a pomelo thorn set in a short stick, a second stick used as a hammer, and one tap per puncture, hundreds a minute. The practice survives mainly in Buscalan, a village of stone-walled terraces reached on foot, where the elderly mambabatok Whang-od has worked for decades and has trained apprentices from her own family. Visitors now come in numbers that the village could not have imagined, and the tapping goes on from morning until the light fails.

The main sights

• The hand-tapping - thorn, stick and soot ink, one puncture at a time, no machine.
• The traditional designs - centipedes, ferns, mountains and rows of marks, each with a fixed meaning.
• Buscalan village - stone-walled houses and rice terraces stacked on a steep slope.
• The apprentices - younger women of the same family, trained by the elder, doing most of the work now.

When to go

November to April; the trail in is slick and dangerous in heavy rain and landslides close the mountain road. Go midweek. Arrive early and expect to stay a night in a village homestay, because the queue often runs past a single day and the last jeepney out leaves in the early afternoon.

What to expect

This is a small village absorbing a heavy stream of visitors and it shows: queues from dawn, numbered tickets, and most tattoos now done by apprentices rather than the elder herself. The road from Bontoc is long and rough and the final walk is steep. Homestays are basic, cold at night and shared. Fees stack up. Think hard about whether you want a mark that belongs to someone else's system of meaning.

Nearby

Bontoc and its Cordillera museum are south; Sagada is a further two hours from there.