Nepal: Mountain temples, monkeys and funeral pyres burning bright

Birth then Life then Death

The wonderful symmetry

Death then Life then Birth

In a small, whitewashed restaurant up the steps of a back alley entrance just on the edge of the tourist district in Katmandu, Nepal there is a local band of young men who make music twice a week on Sundays and Tuesdays. Using traditional flute, drums and stringed instruments they lilt their notes and rhythms together with a rock guitar, acoustic guitar and saxophone. In their young enthusiasm and splay-legged boyishness, they remind me of any band of musicians at home, meeting at the local coffee house or bar to bond with their buddies and hopefully inspire groupie behavior from the local female population.

 

They make their music freely, men joining in, men dropping out. They play western tunes, re-orchestrating on the spot to match the sounds that have played across their lives in temple ceremonies or weddings or funerals. It is a lilting sound, with the flute playing lightly across the top, then dropping down deeply as if across mountain tops and down steep passes.

 

As one of their last numbers, they break into a breathtaking version of Celine Dion’s “My heart will go on” from Titanic. It is at once the cheesiest choice of music and the most beautiful sound I’ve heard in months. My dinner companion, close by my side, leans her head forward and whispers in my ear “Imagine… these are men who’ll never see the ocean.”

 

I arrived in Katmandu on July 10^th after a relaxing week in the bustling, commercial metropolis of Bangkok. With hotel booked and airport transport paid for I headed through customs and passport control and headed down to baggage to collect all my earthly possessions and wander out into the world. While waiting at the baggage carousel, I struck up a conversation with a Japanese girl, Mio.

 

After our short conversation, we decided to head into town together (which turned out to be great since my hotel transport was no where to be found). This saved me both a lying taxi driver telling me my hotel was closed and taking me to another hotel to get their commission and also provided an amazing new friend and travel companion for the next 2 days.

 

It turns out that Mio had lived in Katmandu for 2 years working for an NGO, spoke Nepalese, and was just back for a weeklong visit to bring some funds over from Japan.

 

Over the next few days, she took me under her wing and introduced me to her host family, her painting instructor and her local friends. The first stop we made was to visit her host grandmother, whom she calls mother, a small white-haired lady in a thin sari who lived near the center of town and cried when Mio came back to see her. We sat with her in her kitchen and she made us milk tea and chatted with Mio in Nepalese and Newalese (a local language of her cast) and I smiled intermittently at appropriate intervals.

 

After that we headed up to her painting teachers house at the top of a small hill near the center of town and close to the monkey temple, which was virtually over-run with monkeys.

 

Her painting teacher paints Buddhist mandalas (spiritual paintings which are thought to contain a soul of their own). The painstaking nature of the intricate work means that each small painting can take up to a month to complete, with each stroke of the tiny brush bringing you only one hair closer to a completed mandala painting.

 

We sat with the man and his children and he caught up and chatted with Mio as well, with me smiling and nodding intermittently again, content to soak up the amazing good fortune I had had to be shepherded in the good graces of my new friend.

 

One of the little girls running around the painter’s shop had been a little girl Mio had taken under her wing years before. Her mother, left behind by her husband with two daughters (worth much less in Nepalese and Indian culture than boys), could not afford to feed both of them and decided to give one of the girls to Mio. She told her daughter that she would be back to pick her up, and then left her with NGO orphanage workers that Mio had contacted. In the end, the woman ended up taking the girl back because the aid workers were unable to control her behavior, and her mother married Mio’s painting teacher, which solved the problem.

 

The little girl held my hand sweetly as we ascended the steep stone steps to the monkey temple, but Mio told me that it had been years before she was able to trust western looking people because the aid workers her mother had left her with were white.

 

After two days of spending time with Mio’s grandmother and host mother, Bimala, who even helped us to buy material so we could make saris, going out for great live music (“My heart will go on”), seeing intricate mandalas in progress, and visiting temples, it was time for us to part ways. Amid promises to keep in touch and my many thanks I headed off with my tour group (with whom I’m completing the rest of Nepal and India) and Mio headed off for a visit to the school she supports.

 

Meeting and spending time with Mio helped me remember all the people who have been so kind and helpful along my journey – first in New Zealand and Australia, then in Cambodia. Once again, I was struck with my inability to return their kindness directly, and instead the need to “pay it forward.”

 

Once with the tour group, we headed to more beautiful Buddhist monasteries and temples in and around Kathmandu, stopping along the river to see the Hindus worshipping and cremating their family members by the water. As I stood across the river from them and tried my best to snap some inconspicuous shots of this most intimate ceremony, I was amazed at how in your face death and life can be. 

In the west, we try our best to sweep death under the rug, as if it is not a natural part of being born. According to our tour guide, in Nepal, Hindus believe that life is suffering (meaning that death is the alleviation of that suffering). By burning the bodies on the river’s edge and then putting them in the river, it is hoped that the cycle of life, death and re-birth can be broken so that the deceased will no longer suffer through another life. How different this view is from both the Buddhist belief in reaching enlightenment in this life, and also the our western attachment to this life… as well as Christianities ideas about heaven and hell…

I pondered these thoughts as we rode down through the mountains towards Royal Chitwan National Park and promises of elephant safaris, rhino sightings and even a tiger or two.

 

Chitwan was all it was cracked up to be, albeit with no tiger sightings, and also unbearably hot. Once again, I was sweating like it was my job.

 

One of the most interesting conversations I’ve had thus far was one I had in Chitwan with our guide, Gourav. We were chatting about what he was going to do after he dropped us off at the border of India to meet our next guide. He said that he was heading home to meet some girls his mom wanted him to marry. Apparently, at the ripe old age of 29 he was quite over the hill and his parents were getting sick so they’d decided it was time he married someone who could take care of them. His elder brothers had both married women who were more educated and did not want to move to their home away from Katmandu to take care of his parents. 

 

When we asked how he felt about this, he said it would be fine with him. He would be ok with marrying the girl, and then he would head back to Kathmandu (10 hours away) to lead westerners (and western women) on tours... and perhaps she could stay and take care of his parents. “Kind of like a maid?” I said. “Kind of.” He said, bobbling his head back and forth flirtatiously.

 

This was one if the many times I both thanked my lucky stars that I was born into the situation I was, especially as a woman, but also that I had to take a step back and realize how incredibly different western culture is from many other cultures. As we head into India – the next leg of the journey, I brace myself… and wait for the revelations to come.

 

Everyday I am amazed, humbled, questioned, and devastated. And yet, the cycle, although sometimes unpleasant, is unilaterally inspiring.