Festival disturbance

Nepali festivals are kind of hard to get a grip on. This is festival season, and there are so many diverse castes and peoples that it's more a question of asking 'which festival is on today?' Hindu festivals run on a lunar calendar, so they change every year, and are usually marked by 'first full moon of the month' or some such description. In addition, Nepal has it's own calendar, and the newspapers never seem to report on upcoming events - it's always 'yesterday a meeting was held', 'yesterday this festival happened'.

I came back to Kathmandu from Bhaktapur and things were in full swing for the Hindu festival of Indra Jatra - important to the local Newars. This culminates in the full-scale ritual sacrifice of hundreds of animals in Durbar Square. Unfortunately (for the Newars, not the animals), the recently-elected communist government in Nepal had failed to allocate any money in the budget for the buying of these animals.

Nepali's might be all for a communist government (mostly because they might be a change from previous corrupt governments), but they aren't ready for a cultural revolution. The first night there were protests in the streets, people climbing up on the temple steps and hurling rocks at the riot police below.

Your intrepid reporter Alexander uknowingly slept through the whole thing. The next morning I knew something was up because of the still-smouldering fires in the streets, poles across the roads from an impromptu bandh (strike), and Durbar Square looked a mess:



That night was meant to be the culmination of the festival, and by dusk there were already groups of young Nepali guys with rocks and sticks heading towards Durbar Square. I decided that maybe I didn't want to be a war correspondent, and stayed in my hotel.

The 3 P's: Pashupatinath, Patan, and...

Pos?

Not much to say about either I haven't said in my previous post. Here's some from Pashupatinath. The main temple, around the river, I avoided taking pics of:

Line of small temples occupied by a Sadhu:

I was trying to get a view through all the arches with the Sadhu at the end, but some kids kept getting in the way. Darn kids:

Some cheeky monkeys:


Patan's Durbar Square. The women are celebrating Teej: a Nepali festival where they dress up in red saris, alternately fast and feast, dance and sing and pray for their husbands long lives (or to get a husband). I asked my taxi driver what the wives do who may not want their husband to last that long, but it's a non issue. If you're a married woman in Nepal of a certain generation and status, then you're uneducated and have no way to support yourself. You want your husband to stick around and keep earning money as long as he can.



The museum in Durbar Square: fascinating and beautiful bronze statues:

Bronze breastplate:

Giant hands:

What to do in Kathmandu...

Getting into Kathmandu, the bus pulled up near Thamel, the main tourist district. The first restaurant I went into turned out to be a ‘would you like a lady with your food’ kind of place. I’d been traveling for 24 hours. I was tired, sweaty and hungry. I didn’t want a lady with my food.

After getting showered and changed in a hotel, I went out to see if I could find a cheap meal. I accosted some Americans and asked if they knew anwhere. They were very concerned that I was standing in the middle of the road oblivious to traffic while they huddled on the sidewalk. They took me to a restaurant where I had the best meal in about 6 months, for 700 rupees (14 times the value of a cheap meal). But it was worth it.

Later that night, wandering through the streets of Thamel in the rain, I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Café’s, restaurants, beautiful lighting and rickshaws, funky music coming out of bars and great food (it was a fabled food-stop for overlanders in the hippie days).

But Thamel is a time vortex – I spent two weeks here without realizing I hadn’t done anything. It also has a money reality distortion field – you don’t know how much you’re spending. On the other hand, it takes a while to figure out how to live cheaply in a new place.

The old city of Kathmandhu itself is lovely – quiet, temples everywhere, medieval, lots of little flats surrounding a central courtyard with, probably, some 10th Century stone inscription and a statue in it.

I went to Swayambhunath, a very nice temple complex surrounded by a small park. It used to be completely surrounded by farms, now the urban sprawl comes right up to it. No pics though.

I hung out at the Kaiser Mahal Library – a colonial relic with dark wood panelling, dead animals on the walls, and books about the British Empire that haven’t been updated since the 1940’s. Great stuff.

I met a tourist I’d last seen in Bundi – this is completely normal by now.

I went to Pashupatinath, the main Shiva temple in Nepal (Shiva is big here). It’s a big temple complex on the Bagmati River, where a lot of Nepali’s go to be cremated. I didn’t take photos of the temples by the river – there were a few cremations going on. The main temple is banned to non-Hindu’s – tourists used to stomp around in it in their shoes, use flash photography and generally create a fuss.

I went to Patan, Kathmandu’s old sister city that is now joined by the spreading cities. This is my recommendation for staying in Kathmandu - much quieter.

While getting a new Indian Visa I met two German Tibetologists who were going to a casino the next night. We got dressed up, enjoyed (great) free food and drink, watched a show and gambled away 1000 rupees with a bunch of drunk Indians (Nepali’s aren’t allowed in – a Maoist thing?).

Here are some pics.

Public baths in the old city, most of them still in use:



Kathmandu’s Durbar Square (every major city’s got one, I think it means Royal Square). The pagoda-style architecture was created in Nepal, exported to China then spread to South-East Asia:

My friend Narayan:

A guy meditating on some temple steps:

A closer look – his eyes are rolled up (Tantric?):

Kids fly kites all over Nepal, like in The Kite Runner. It’s a competitive sport though: the string is covered with abrasive material and the aim is to cut the other guy’s kite out of the sky:

Stone inscription, interesting bronze doors, little shrine, Shiva lingham and yoni inside. The old city is littered with monuments like these:

I was used to riding the waves of my Indian travel Karma, and it took me a while to get into the swing of things in Kathmandu.