The Festival and The Jew

Last Sunday I went to my first full fledged Nepali festival! This was great fun, if not a little over whelming as well. The festival was in celebration of the beginning of the monsoon rains, a welcome thing here in Nepal because of the agriculture. Here comes the rice! We have made a Nepali friend named Rajendra who is 19 years old and owns a paper shop in Bhaktapur (a town about 45 minutes from here, and fabulous!) We met Rajendra at our house and Matt, Christine and I headed out to Patan where the festival was to take place. The scene once we got to Patan was madness!! Complete madness and most fabulous!! We started off the festivities going to the "amusement park." We got our amusement from watching everybody else. Hundreds of people were packed in, it was like the Rose Festival x100. We eyed the rides and decided against them as they were a bit rickety. On a few of the rides boys were just hanging off the edges, enjoying a free (and dangerous) ride. After some ice-cream Rajendra suggested we go to the "jew." The "jew"? They have synagouges here? He went to get us tickets for the jew and came back to pass them out. We headed down the street to the jew and I salivated thinking of latkes. Then we saw the sign: "Patan Zoo." Ahhh..... the zoo! We learned that Nepalis call the zoo the jew. I was a bit dissappointed we would not be getting an Manoschevitz wine, but was still very excited for the zoo. Now, I thought the amusement park was chaos. I hadn't seen nothin' yet. The zoo was pandemonium, crazy, maniacal! Insanity! But so great. Since the festival was going on I think every person in Kathmandu decided to go to the zoo that day. We walked along the path where all the zoo animals were. Actually we didn't really walk, but there were so many people that we had no choice but to be moved along by the crowd. The zoo was actually a bit sad. The animals live in tiny cages with nothing much in them. The Nepalis throw every thing they can find in the cages to try to make the animals do something: crackers, cans, rocks, umbrellas. Mostly the animals were hiding in the corners away from the massive crowd. After a while we sad on the side and stopped for a drink. We counted and literally 15 people passed everysecond, so we calculated about 4,000 or more people were in the zoo grounds at that moment. After a while of sitting I suggested that we should hop in the spotted hyeaena cage, and change the sign to "American Monkeys" because we were of much greated interest to everyone than was the hyeana. Next up was the tiger. People pushing to see the tiger was almost a riot. I was surprised no one was trampled underfoot from the tiger riot. We also saw elephants which we got to touch, cheetahs, rhinos, hippos, all sorts of birds, snakes, gazelles, dear, squirells, black bears, and a few other miscellaneous animals. It was quite fun, but I would like to go again when not so busy.

After the jew we went to a restaurant where we got a good view of the festivities. The crowds piled into the streets around this chariot looking thing. The wheels of the wooden chariot were about 15 feet high, and on the chariot was what a guy from Louisiana described as a "Nepali christmas tree." It did look sort of like a massive dead pine tree, decorated with banners, gold ornaments, red sashes, and other things. The "tree" was about 50 feet high. Around 5 o'clock PM was when all the important people started showing up. The police on horse had to keep the crowd back while all sorts of government officials came in their cars. Finally came the prime minister escorted by many army cars. When he got there the band played a while and other festivities took place. Then 3 government officials climbed onto the chariot and held up a black shirt, something ceremonial, I am not sure what it meant. Then the marching band paraded around playing songs. It was a great festival. After it was winding down teenage boys pulled the massive chariot through the streets plowing down everything and anything in it's way including all low power lines. The festival was wonderful!!