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