On Saturday night I got an email from Kinnari asking if I wanted to go to Nagarkot the next morning to see Everest at sunset. Of course I said yes, and set off at 6.30 the next morning to meet Rajendra (her guide and the orphanage owner/runner/guy) at 8 in Thamel.
It usually takes over an hour to get to Thamel. I have to get a bus from the road, or from Bungamati, and hope it goes to Ratna Park where I can walk fifteen minutes to Thamel, or get off at Jawalakhel then get another smaller bus to Ratna Park, while navigating language barriers and accents. But because it was early in the morning, I managed to not only get a bus straight to Ratna, I got a seat, and there was very little traffic! Which meant I started walked to Thamel at about 7.
As I was walking a guy yelled out, and apologised for picking me out of the crowd (only white gal I guess), and asked if I knew where Thamel was. He had just gotten off the bus from India after a year there, and his visa had expired. I walked him to Thamel, we got coffee and I managed to kill time very nicely until Rajendra showed! Rajendra showed him somewhere cheap to stay, and fingers crossed I’ll catch up with him soon – its so nice having friends in Kathmandu. The complete appreciation on being able to chatter on like no-ones business is amazing. (From a language point of view – the girls let me yabber on but can’t reply at all haha).
Anyway, it turned out that it was actually a tour of the Kathmandu valley we were doing, and then a stay at Nagarkot in the evening. Rajendra has a trekking and tour guide company, and if you ever go to Nepal, he is the guy to see. He has got to be one of the kindest men I have ever met, and every penny he earns goes towards the children at his orphanage.
So! I’m going to do this in installments, because there was a weeks worth of site-seeing stuffed in to 2 days.
Firstly: we met Kinnari in Pashupatinath. This is the most important Hindu temple in Nepal, and a great pilgrimage site. It sits on the Bagmati river, and is dedicated to Shiva in the form of Pashupati – Lord of the Beasts. The pagoda part below was built in the 16oo’s, but it has been a site of worship for Buddhists and Hindus for much longer.
As a non-Hindu, I couldn’t go into the temple itself, but I got lots of interesting photos outside while i was waiting for Kinnari and Rajendra to finish. There were cows wandering around, monkeys too, old men and women in orange robes who have come to the care centres in the temple to die.
The last picture is of Kinnari with her offering to the Gods. When they got out we walked round to the other side where the river is, and where cremations occur. The first photo is Kinnari watching a cremation occur on one of the stone platforms. Chopped bamboo is piled up and the body is place on a bamboo ladder wrapped in a shroud. The faster the body burns indicates how good the person is. The oldest son will wear white for 11 days, and abstain from salt. When the body has burnt then relatives will search for the navel, wrap it in white and put it in the river. The naval is the connection to the mother from birth, so it is where the soul is.
On the right here you can see an orange shape next to the water. This is the body of someone who has died and relatives are yet to collect. The body is being purified by water and milk from the temple behind.
These are just some of the beautiful photos from the site. It was packed full of tourists, but I think we spent about two hours here. We then walked up and over the hill through jungle, next to the old royal hunting grounds where the were deer right up to the fence.
I love Nepal’s sudden changes, it’s filthy, choking, dusty, with rubbish burning on the side of the street, and then suddenly it’s pristine with beautiful trees, animals everywhere and a cool breeze. It can be pure clean air, bright colours, utter tranquility, and then a rattling, smokey bus veers through honking the horn.
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