The buildings and shops looked thrown together, turbulent.
Nothing fi t, yet it was all so irresistible.
The buildings and shops looked thrown together,
turbulent. Nothing fi t, yet it was all so irresistible.
Out one window was a group of men, bare-chested
in fl ip fl ops, soaping up with buckets of grey
water; out the opposite window, women in long
skirts carried awkward bundles on their backs
and strapped to their foreheads — bent with their
burdens but casually talking amongst themselves.
Out of both windows, little hands selling matches
and bits of food tried to entice me. Add to that
heaps of construction dust, and you have one gaping
tourist by nightfall. On my fi rst day, I was already in
overload. On the corner, a barber covered his mirror
with a cloth and hobbled over to the bridge for a
smoke. Closed for the day. Me, too.
The next morning, rested and rinsed free of the
previous day’s bare-knuckle hullabaloo, I was
ready to absorb everything on my agenda. Every
morning I felt the same; every evening I crashed.
Kathmandu was just too dense, too fabulously
bewildering; a sensual, unthinkable babble of
sights, sounds, and adventures.
The Bagmati River, holy to Hindus and Buddhists
alike, fl ows through Kathmandu and eventually
joins the holiest Hindu river, Ma Ganga, the Ganges.
Into its torpid waters, the ash remains of countless
generations of Nepalis have been poured. I was
headed to the eastern bank of the river, just opposite
Pashupatinath Temple. The eyes of the Buddha were
everywhere: doors, temples, T-shirts, cars.
The pathway leading up the hill to where the
cremation ceremonies could be respectfully observed
had plenty to distract and tempt. Turquoise masks of
Ganesha, Tibetan singing bowls, crimson scarves, and
beaded bangles. Cows and dogs wandered, and the
monkeys kept the tourists entertained, but the sellers
wary. They were deviously light fi ngered, mercurial,
and saucy. Caps, water bottles, sandwiches — gone!
Brilliant fl owers for death or celebration
The painful yank of a dangling earring schooled me to
keep my distance.
At the top of the hill, looking across the Bagmati,
several fi res were sending up swaths of smoke. The
bodies came shrouded in white on wooden stretchers.
Their feet were dipped in the water three times
and placed on pyres of wood, beginning the rituals.
Crowds of mourners endlessly arrived and dispersed.
By the bridge, a fi esta of tangerine-coloured marigolds
were piled high for the mourners to place on the
bodies. On a grey day with blurring swirls of ashen
smoke, by a river almost black with pollution, this was
the brightest colour and warmth in a grieving tableau.
Then there was Durbar Square, the complete
antithesis and antidote; fi endishly fascinating,
streaming with life, and opulent with pigeons,
ferocities and temples. I was rapt. Street shrines,
some with the remains of a recent sacrifi ce;
tumbling temples and dusty piles of bricks and
masonry courtesy of the 2015 earthquake; long
lines of men along a chain link fence reading
pages from tacked up Nepali newspapers; divine
statues of creatures and gods, the stuff of childhood
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