religious experiences

Friday was a public holiday as it was a large Hindu festival Mahashivaratri...

In the morning I decided to go visit a Buddhist temple that I had been meaning to see for a while. I thought I might cycle, which wouldn’t have been a bad thing if I knew where I was going, and if every other person on the road wasn’t a Hindu on their way to the Hindu temple and so of course knew nothing about the location of any Buddhist temples… I cycled round the ring road which is the main road going all the way round Kathmandu, it runs past Pashputi Nath temple where all the Hindus were going. As there were so many people on the road it was effectively closed and so I had to walk, trying not to bash people with the bike, and trying to avoid Sadhus determined to put red dots on my forehead for ‘luck’. As I was going up the hill I saw 2 large helicopters circling the town with large red flags hanging off the bottom of them… for a while I thought perhaps the Maoists were staging a coup or something, but I don’t think the Maoists have air power… in the end I figured they had to be something to do with the festival… but I’m not sure what. Finally back riding I got totally lost, but somehow found the temple, after having a minor head on collision with a motorbike, as I was overtaking a truck… so yes possibly it was partly my fault… but its so frustrating when my bike can go faster than half the vehicles on the road, I end up cycling like Nepalis drive (all over the place), which possibly is a recipe for disaster. Somehow he only clipped the side of my bike, but I really don’t know how I stayed on as it was quite a whack. Anyway the temple was beautiful – well I suppose the prayer flags against the blue sky were beautiful. I got rather carried away on the photo front which if you have a squizz at flickr you will see. Its like a different world out there as most of the people living round the stuppa are Tibetan refugees. Most marvellously I discovered they sell arrul (or the Tibetan equivalent)… mmm dried curds… mmm just like in Mongoland. After ambling around with the monks and tourists I got back on me bike and cycled home.

On the way I ran into a huge procession of people wearing white. White puffer jackets, white saris, white shirts… white everything. There were thousands of them and I cycled past them all… past tuktuks ferrying small child goddesses - very ‘made up’ as if going to a beauty pageant, past flags, past loud speakers, past a marching band, past small children carrying vases and wearing inordinate amounts of eye make-up, until I came to the front of the line and started talking to a man, who if I didn’t know you couldn’t convert to Hinduism, I would have thought he was trying to convert me, the way he went on about the father of my soul, and fingers pointing to heaven etc. We walked alongside a holy ‘linga’ (phallic statue) which was sitting in a flat bed truck, surrounded by more holy people and covered with flowers and other offering looking things. For some reason that I couldn’t work out it was being transported to a park, so I went with it to the park, and then went home. All very random.

But the day got more random, when I met up with my friends and we walked down to PashputiNath to see what was going on there. I had been forewarned about the ganja smoking sadhus (and there were rumours that some would be naked – but no naked men were seen). Even so it was kind of surprising to see thousands of people crushing into the temples to be blessed and then coming outside and smoking dope sold or given (I don’t know which) to them by Sadhus (or holy men). Seriously it was surreal; I had never smelt so much of the stuff in such a small area. It seemed like it was mostly men smoking… and smoking lots of the stuff, despite it being illegal in Nepal, it seems no one minds during this festival as there were police all over the place too, trying to herd crowds and stop people pelting the king’s car with stones when he came to be blessed (police seemed fairly unsuccessful on both counts).

Then we saw the snake charmers and my friend got to wear a snake round her neck and pose with a cobra on her head, whilst other sadhus played whistles and got stoned. I think the snakes were stoned too, they didn’t seem to be doing much. It was all so random – especially when you try and relate it to any religious festival in the UK. The other thing was that the festival was at Pashputi Nath which is where they cremate people, in full public view… so the smell of dope is intermingled with the smell of burning bodies, which is masked by incense. Seeing people being burnt on the ghats is a strange thing. Death and body disposal are very much away from public view at home, but here the bodies burn just across the river, and telfy the tourist and other tourists took photos. Which in itself is slightly odd… I mean why was I taking photos of burning bodies? (albeit at a distance)… I’m not sure, but you can see them on flickr – don’t worry nothing is very distinguishable and you probably wouldn’t know what it was unless I told you…

So all in all a random day of Buddhist and Hindu religious experiences!