The funerary rite is the central ceremony, entailing three days and two nights of rituals to send souls to the Land of the Ancestors.
Among the Gurung, death involves the dissolution of bodily elements – earth, air, fire, and water.
One ritual in the freeing of souls involves a "Klehpree" injecting the spirit of the deceased through a string into a bird, which then appears to recognize family members and otherwise act unnaturally.
[3] From the Land of the Ancestors, spirits continue to take an interest in their surviving kinsmen, able to work good and evil in the realm of the living.
After the burial or cremation, the family of the deceased may constructs a small shrine on a hill to offer food to the spirit, which remains and may cause misfortune.
A final funerary ceremony takes places a year or more after death, for which an expensive funeral rite is performed.
This rite includes an effigy (called a pla) of the deceased, draped in white cloth and decorated with ornaments.
The death rituals close as Klehpri addresses the spirit and sends it to its resting place, after which the hilltop shrine is dismantled.
[3] Further rites ensue, during which the priest recites supplications to the "spirits of the four directions" for kind treatment as the deceased makes his way to the spirit realm, advises the departing soul on its choice between reincarnation and remaining in the Land of Ancestors, and admonishes it to stay away from its worldly cares and not to return prematurely.
However, today Gurung priests can be found outside Nepal in England, United States and Hong Kong.