The funeral rites sound the most dramatic — huge stone blocks are cut and dragged long distances and used to build tombs while numerous animal sacrifices are made to accompany the departed soul to the afterlife.

With these images dancing in my head entering the village feels even more like stepping back in time. Dark wooden houses are built on the uneven rocky ground, each thatched roof soaring like a witch’s hat high into the sky.

Between the steep rocks and sparse trees are enormous slabs of stone, sacred tombs and elaborate carvings. To my right an old man carries a chicken to one of the grey stone slabs. I pause to watch him squat low on his haunches, lay the bird on the stone and mutter a mysterious incantation.

An inconspicuous entrance is impossible. Alerted by the barking of dogs, a gaggle of barefoot children appear like magic and I arrive at the chief’s home like a prehistoric Pied Piper, chickens, puppies and children in tow. Embarrassed by the attention, I’m relieved that Dato can perform the Sumbanese social niceties.

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Money and cigarettes exchanged, I’m invited into a tall, smoke-filled room so dim that it takes minutes for my eyes to adjust.

The living conditions are basic; this elderly couple sleep directly on the hard wooden floor, a fire burning despite the suffocating heat. Homes here are thought to link the worlds of spirit and man and haven’t changed for thousands of years; the dark wooden beams are believed to be the doorway through which the dead can bless their descendants.

Palm leaves cover the roof but according to Sumbanese myth the first ancestral home was covered with human hair, snatched during head-hunting raids.

Which brings me, a little nervously, to this most infamous Sumbanese tradition. “Yes, head-hunting took place,” Dato says as we step through some squealing piglets to the centre of the village. I later learn that the practice, officially abandoned in the 1950s, still occurred in major battles in the late Nineties.

An enemy’s head was brought back to the village in celebration and hung on the nattily named skull tree. Sodan no longer has one but a nearby village apparently kept the charred tree remains.

Head-hunting may be over but the drumbeat of battle is never far away. Young Sumbanese men regularly fight in traditional boxing matches, and every March is Pasola, the enactment of ritual warfare on horseback. Spears are used, injuries are common and bloodletting is essential.

All this talk of battles, coupled with the punishing sunshine, leaves me a little dizzy. But it feels utterly surreal to be back at Nihiwatu, snorkelling with fish in the cool ocean and swaying gently in a hammock between two palm trees.

The poverty of the villages is so absolute, and the view from here so beautiful, miles of white beach framed with thick green rainforest. I sip my drink guiltily and think that every drop of water in Sodan must be brought on a woman’s head from the valley far below.

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