A long bike ride... temples... and slaughtering

Today Callum and I cycled up a huge hill to see a temple on the Southern outskirts of the KTM valley which Lonely Planet describes as being "awash with blood" at some times of the year... This is because it is a temple to the goddess Kali who is bloodthirsty and so requires animal sacrifices. It was a bizarre experience and for various reasons made me think what a sanitised world we live in in the west... if this happened in the UK there would be RSPCA people running around like mad trying to save the goats and chickens from having their heads hacked off, and probably child protection people trying to save the many small children from seeing the animals have their heads hacked off...

The temple was awash with many many many people and is apparently this way most weeks. Not everyone had chickens or goats to sacrifice, I am guessing they are pretty expensive, so there were also people with coconuts and rice and other less bloody things to offer to the goddess. We were allowed to wander around everywhere with all the other tourist paparazzi (some serious camera equipment was on display), except we couldn't go into the actual area where the image of the goddess was... we saw chickens and goats being beheaded and blood spurting all over the place. Beheading is not done in a nice clean Mongolian way, however there were no horrific animal noises and it is done by professional type people... i.e the general public don't actually kill their own sacrifice. After the blood has been spilled the bodies of the animals are carted outside to the butchering area where they are nicely prepared ready for people to take home to eat...

After this Hindu experience we went back up the road to Pharping for a Buddhist one. Much less of a circus and nice and peaceful.

Photos below... and more artyfarty ones on flickr (link on right)...

Opportunities to pick up some slaughtering equipment

People and chickens wait in line to get to the templeIt's a very long line...

Temple from above... the temple is nothing much... in fact it appears to be housed in some sort of shabby tent... the wooded location is lovely tho. It's a bit dark to see, but basically several queues of people are snaking down the hill.
Goat waits patiently in line... little does it know what awaits (a big knife to hack off its head)Chicken also oblivious to the impending doomNot such a great photo... but you get the idea... knives + animal/ bird = blood... lots of blood
Goat's head is removedAfterwards there are opportunities for small children to really enjoy that headless chicken and goat experience... thinking about this... is it that different from my dad catching a lobster and my mum boiling it in a big pan and Mely and I listening to it cry to death as small children?... I have more in common with these munchkins than I realised... and to make it worse we were not given such lovely orange garlands... oh the trauma... Candle lighting (prayers for the deceased animals?)
Crowds in the temple. The blood letting is taking place behind the wall at the bottom of the photo.Once the animal has been killed and some blood offered to the goddess its time to get it made into steaks for tea - these butchers were busy...
Plenty of Puja opportunities if you are that way inclined - they daub red stuff (not blood) on your forehead, it looks quite pretty except when it is sometimes mixed with a bit of rice for that "| splattered diner on my forehead effect"... Outside the temple there were a varied and exciting array of things to buy... it was hard to resist the urge to consume consume consume... there was the standard offering set (chickens were also available for those who forgot to bring one)
A glorious selection of fake flowers Fruit and veg (presumably to accompany that slaughtered meat at diner time)
The biggest selection of tack ever... the plastic toy guitars, inflatable aeroplanes, luminous soft toys on key rings, plastic jewelry and other assorted crap seemed a world away from the blood fest going on down the hill. Last but not least that Nepali favourite (up there with Britney) Avril Lavingne posters... it seems that just what you need after conducting a religious ceremony is a super large Avril poster for your bedroom... interestingly I didn't see any Britney posters... which was a good thing, because as you can imagine I would have had to buy them all up and keeping them nice and uncrumpled on the bike ride home would have been a nightmare.
Then it was off to Pharping and many steps and some Buddhist temples... for fairly obvious reasons no animal sacrifice here... (or for that matter alcohol). Photo below is Tharig Gompa.
Tharig GompaThis monk was a total cutie
Callum at the top of the hillPrayer flags... my favourite... they just look so lovely
This was some sort of fireplace, but it looks like a witches cauldron I thinkOne of the temples at Pharping
Butter lampsSome strange red feet

Saris...

On Saturday we dressed up in Saris at the orphanage... they are very glamourous outfits but are totally impractical for doing anything other than sitting or standing like a statue...

Ruth and me...

Me, Ruth, Joy-to-the-world and Moo

David, Ruth, Anand, Moo, Me and Joy

Caving and a visit to Machendranath's house

Went cycling again yesterday and we decided to stop and look at some caves (= error 1)... Jeyran managed to negotiate knock down bargain basement entrance fee and we chose our route (not the shortest option = error 2)...

So we set off with guide and head torches... I don't think we really appreciated what the caves would be like... I certainly didn't imagine a tunnel only marginally wider than me which I would have to drag myself through on my knees and occasionally my stomach... it was also very slippery and at one point I felt like Augustus Gloop in the chocolate tube in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' as we had to kind of ascend vertically up a fairly slimy muddy hole... it was dark apart from our torches and we also saw some bats... in saying this it was quite comedy in a sort of what on earth am I doing, will I ever get out of here sort of way... needless to say I am not planning taking up pot-holing or mining any time soon.

Jeyran emerges from a small hole into a slightly bigger one

Part of the Augustus Gloop tunnel

Callum crawling out of a hole...

Bat!

I was glad when we escaped into fresh air after about 30/40min... my ever overactive imagination (fed on BBC world news reports) had been dreaming up all sorts of scenarios such being trapped like those miners in Utah or squished by an earthquake like the one in Peru...

Once outside we realised that we looked like we had been rolling around in a mud bath... and for the rest of the day people seemed to assume we had been involved in some sort of serious off road biking mud fest... actually the photo doesn't do the mud justice... the stains on the back of my shorts aren't ever coming out!

After the cave experience we looked round a Ganesh temple where the ladies were at puja

Then over the bridge made in Aberdeen Scotland at Chobar gorge... it looks like this will be replaced by something much wider soon...

At the bridge we were accosted by people trying to sell us all sorts of junk... small bags, wallets, singing bowls from Tibet and of course an illustrated guide to the Karma Sutra... just what one wants to read on a Saturday morning bike ride... the man selling seemed to be affronted non of us wanted such a wonder, his final retort as we got on our bikes being something along the lines of us all obviously being perfect and hence not needing the guide... comedy...

We rode on to Bungamati a nice little Newari village in the valley... here wandered around and abouts... saw wood carving, more chillies and various other things (more photos on flickr - link on right hand side). We were also followed by a small tribe of children fascinated by our bikes, and just desperate to have a ride (answer: NO), and play with the bells, gears, bike computers etc (answer: hard to stop them).

We also found the temple where Machendranath (god of rain?) resides when he is not being dragged around in his precarious Chariot... Lennie I know you will be excited to see the photo below of his "home"... I didn't actually get a look at Machandranath as I don't look particularly Hindu and there were rather a lot of people chanting, and clambering up the steps to the front of the shrine... and so I thought it wise not to attempt such a feat...

On leaving the village we saw this random sign... I think advertising a cafe, however it brings to mind some sort of NGO (charity) that rushes around distributing picnics (in Harrods hampers darling?) to the poor and needy...

We also saw various different children doing various different activities which amused me because in the UK they would probably be locked inside watching TV, playing on their PS2 and never allowed to put themselves in such danger...

Small child enjoys playing with rusty oil barrel used to burn rubbish... at one point she even gave it a good lick... nice

Another small child makes fiery offerings at the temple

This small child, although admittedly not in any apparent immediate danger, does look like she is about to go out on the razzel dazzel with all that eye make up on... i should probably enquire as to why so many babies wear such black eye make up, i am sure there is a logical (?) explanation...

Grannie activities

As some may know I love my grannie activities (and my grannie)... so I thought I would attach some photos of some grannie activities going on at the orphanage...

Sadie do you remember teaching Christy and I to make origami cranes and 12 pointed stars on those cold winter days in the motherland? I can still make both... Christy can you?!! I only did the cranes with the kids... Making the cranes was interesting a couple of the kids got it instantly, but there was one girl in particular, she is 13, and seriously she was not able to fold the paper in half, despite me showing it to her repeatedly, and then helping her very closely... At a guess I think this is some sort of developmental brain damage probably caused by malnutrition when she was small... nutrition is soooo important, and yet so many kids here aren't lucky enough to have access to it... perhaps their parents are too poor... perhaps their mother doesn't know what is good nutrition... perhaps they are a girl and are not valued enough to waste too many precious food resources on...

1st folds

With some cranes... we made LOTS

They wanted to string the cranes up - see left hand side (I have this sort of thing in my house)

Knitting socks for the winter... I am not their teacher fortunately

Henna hands

The last month has been some sort of special month where every Monday good Hindu ladies fast and pray for their husbands and men in their life... not sure if I wrote this before, but basically they fast so that their men will have a long life, and they wont be left widows.

Another part of the month for ladies is having mahindi or henna applied to your hands... so one day after work last week I went with some friends to get it done... it was fun, and seems to last quite a while, although it is slowly fading now... photos below!

before we get our hands done Rajani and Radhika munch down on some yummy street food!

Looks like some weird marriage proposal momentThey apply the henna and then it has to dry for about 2+ hrs. This makes doing anything involving the use of hands impossible without causing smear-age. I opted for less henna than my friends so that I would be able to open the door of my house and eat dinner etc. I think I had 3 "clean fingers" which helped!

Finished results! Henna all dried and washed off leaving a random (corporate) orange stain. My hands are the pasty white ones in case you couldn't work that out!

As you can see, significantly less henna on my hands!!