Hanging coffins, pine fog, and Cordillera coffee — Mountain Province's quiet town
Sagada is a small highland municipality in Mountain Province, Luzon, known for three things that nowhere else in the Philippines quite matches: the ancient Kankana-ey practice of placing coffins on cliff faces and inside caves (a tradition over 2,000 years old that continues today), the cool fog-wrapped pine forests of the Cordillera mountains, and the exceptional local coffee grown in the surrounding hills. The town is small enough to walk entirely in a morning — Echo Valley, Sumaguing Cave, and Bomod-ok Falls are all reachable on foot or short guides. The food is mostly simple Sagada pine-f…
Sagada's indigenous Kankana-ey people resisted Igorot raids and colonial pressures for centuries in these mountains, developing a distinct culture and belief system centred on the anito spirit world. The hanging coffins are placed facing east so the dead can follow the sun; the oldest coffins visible today date from around 200 BCE. American Episcopalian missionaries arrived in 1904 and built the St. Mary the Virgin Church that still anchors the town; the balance between indigenous practice and Christianity is still actively negotiated in Sagada today. The town became popular with backpackers…