Kathmandu

I.N.D.I.A. - I'll Never Do It Again. This is how Nepalese people speak about India. And we kind of understand why. Nepal is less dirty, less noisy, less agressive than India. People are usually very friendly and helpful. We arrived few days ago but we already like this small country better. We feel great to be here! No doubt we will be back in India sooner or later, this country is amazing and we still have much to see there. And about Nepal, well our visa is for one month but we can also make it longer.

While in India your religion, your sex, your caste, your ethnicity determine all your identity and place in society, it seems that here (but perhaps we're totally mistaking...) it matters less and that all those things "melt" somehow all together. In religion, for instance, it really does melt. Nepalese people are religious too, but they balance hinduism with a good dose of buddhism and some elements of folk traditions. If you ask a Nepalese person : "Are you hindu or buddhist?", he will probably answers "yes".

On our first day we went to visit two very holy places : Pashupati temple, one of the most important hindu place in Nepal, and Bouddha Stūpa, the biggest buddhist stūpa in Nepal. Pashupatinath was very impressive and really left a mark on us. We have seen many religious places since we started the trip, but here we felt really inside it. At first we arrived in front of a dark pagoda of burned wood and red paint where a goat had just been freshly decapitated for sacrifice. In this pagoda was the altar of the goddess Kali, personification of violence. The paintings and sculpture were quite morbid, including one dancing skeletton with penis. Statues of smiling cows surrounding it made the place even more surrealistic. Some other pagodas, here and there, and in between the monkeys and the Sadhus, with their colorful and cheerful faces. But the most interesting and shocking for us happened at the ghats. Pashupatinath is a place where Hindus come to incinerate their dead relatives. The cremation is public. The body is brought on a pile of wood from where it is set on fire. People are crying. The fire is lasting. This is how we saw the life of the people from the inside, when the intimate becomes public. Then we walked to the massive and beautiful stūpa, with Buddha's big blue eyes looking in every direction from each of its four sides.

The following day we spent in the heart of Kathmandu. After a long walk (we got lost), we crossed the touristic streets of Thamel before to reach Durbar square. Durbar square is an amazing place of pagodas, stūpas and other beautiful buildings in quite random dispostition. The pagodas are really wonderful. First you see their incredible silhouette, but more you get closer to the wooden details and more beautiful they are. In one of those bulding lives also the living goddess Kumari. She is, in fact, a little girl believed to be the reincarnation of the goddess Taleju. She is chosen at a young age and is raised as a goddess until her first menstruation when she goes outside for the very first time. That's actually a little creepy. She is a hindu goddess, but somehow chosen by a buddhist clan, in a very similar way they choose the Lama. Another very Nepalese mix of religions.

In Kathmandu we live with a Nepalese family. They are all very kind and friendly, and do everything to make us feel at home. Hem, the father, helped us to organize our two next weeks in Nepal. We will go trekking in Himalaya, rafting, riding elephant, before to reach Pokhara. Today we met our guide for the trekking, he seems very nice. A lot of adventure to come!