Pashupatinath

Yesterday we did a bit of sight seeing around Kathmandu. A small group of us including me, Matt, Christine, Amie and our Nepali friend Bijay decided to go to Pashupatinath and Bouddhanath. I had been to Bouddhanath one time already, but have not been to Pashupatinath, so I was very excited to go. Pashupatinath and Bouddha (for short) are a bit out of the center of Kathmandu, about 6 or 7 kilometers, so we taxied it out there. Our first stop was Pashupatinath (Pashupati for short.)
I would have to say Pashupati is my favorite thing in this city I have seen so far. It is a sprawling layout of temples, shrines, statues, and ghats all based around the sacred Bagmati river. A little background: Pashupati is Nepal's most sacred Hindu shrine. It is where pilgrims end their journey from all over Nepal and India. Pashupati is where the funerals of high class (I believe) Hindus take place. Lining the Bagmati are stone steps that lead into the mucky waters. There are small stone platforms on the river side where the funerals take place.
The walk into Pashupatinath is a street lined with carts selling magnificently bright strands of beads and other adornments. Also there are piles of eye blinding tikka powder in every color imagineable: red, magenta, gold, turquoise. (Tikkas are the red dot on the forhead which means you are a Hindu.) Monkeys play around the statues of Shiva and eat scraps of crackers thrown to them. We made our way onto the main ground where the main temple sits. A magnificently large temple dedicated to shiva with a glinting gold roof. Most of the temples, actually all of them, have "HINDU ONLY" signs propped out front. But this is okay, because the grounds are magnificent anyway. Near by the ghats a crowd of people were gathered around somewhat large hole in the ground that a man with a shovel was filling with dirt. We went over to investigate. It looked like a grave, and this confused me because I was under the impressiion that Pashupati was where the dead are burned, then their ashes are pushed into the Bagmati to make their way to the Ganges. We went to investigate. Bijay told us that it was a baby who was being buried. Apparently when babies die (Hindu) they are buried and not burned. (The good thing about touring places with a Nepali friend is that you learn alot more about what is going on.) After paying our respects we made our way down the medieval river banks to the ghats. There were a few large fires going on and a crowds around them. The ashes were pushed into the swirling muddy Bagmati once they had burned down quite a bit. It was strange to thing that a human body was in there. I was taking a few pictures and got separated from the rest of my group, which was actually fine with me because I really like to take my time and observe things and they were walking too fast for my tastes. At places like this, and other religious places I have been in Nepal, there are an incredible amount of tiny details to look at, and when you put all the tiny details together they make a wonderful picture of the whole place. So I strolled along, looking at the tiny shrines, the monkeys playing with each other, the centuries old inscriptions on massive stones, stone temples covered with a thick green moss. It is all quite magnificent and wonderful. I felt like I was transported back to ancient times. One of the most interesting things about Pashupati is that this is the place where a huge number of the sadhus hang out. These are the most interesting people. You may have seen pictures of them before: they men who have renounced all family, caste, and pleasure in search of spiritual insight. Some wear hardly any clothes at all, some wear bright orange robes. Some wear sandals, but most don't wear shoes. Alot of them, especially around Pashupati, are covered with white ash and have yellow and red paint on their faces and bodies. They have long scraggly beards, and incredibly long dreadlocks tied into huge knots on their heads. The dreadlocks, I have read, to them symbolize the matted chaos of the world. Some apparently refuse to sit down for years, which you can tell by looking at their feet. Some put themselves through incredible pain, doing things like ripping holes through their ears or piercing their genitals with their trident staffs which are a hall mark of the sadhus. They carry around metal pails which are used to collect money. Pretty much, they are supported by whoever wants to give to them and contribute to their path of enlightenment. They travel around, pretty much as nomads. Anyway, they sit around Pashupati in groups chatting with one another and smoking pipes full of ganja, which is one of the 16 essential things of Shiva worship. Also, smoking all that ganja helps them with expanding their consciousness and finding the path to enlightenment. They are quite interesting fellows, to say the least. So I sat around and watched the sadhus and wandered around the grounds through the sleepy little stone temples which sit under the shade of banyan trees where dogs and people sleep under. I walked along a good section of the river where there were huge groups of Hindu pilgrims in their underwear (men only) taking a ritual dip in the waters. I walked back to the ghats (funeral platforms by the side of the river). There was a pretty big crowd gathered around one platform. I looked over, and there was a dead body lying there!! It was a bit of a shock. So I stayed and watched the funeral. I was about 10 feet from the dead man. The rituals performed before they burned him were very interesting. Another man, maybe a brother or something, circled him a certain number of times, then sprinkled some sort of powder or rice on the dead man, who was laying ontop of a pile of fire wood and covered up to his neck with a bright orange cloth. He also had brilliant yellow, orange, and pink flowers sprinkled on him. Then a man, maybe the priest, went down the steps to the Bagmati and got some water from the river in his hands and brought it back up to the dead man and sprinkled the water on his face and in his mouth. Then the priest spread straw all over the man's body in a thick layer and then set the whole pile of firewood, body, and straw on fire. It was a quite bizarre and amazing thing to watch. After watching to the funeral I went and sat outside one of the Hindu only temples and listened to the music from inside. Around the main temple there is a large number of diseased dogs, who all looked ferocious so I moved a little bit away. A group of young children who live in Pashupatinath (well, they are what you would call "homeless", but they sleep probably on the stone shelters around the grounds) came up to me and of course, asked me to take some pictures of them. "Miss! Miss! Single photo! One single photo!" All these poor children are amazed (I would be too) at the idea of a digital camera. They like you to take pictures of them, and then have you show them a preview of the picture. It's sort of like seeing yourself on TV. After a while there were a crowd of about 15 kids pretty much all sitting on me, looking at the inside of my arms (white!!), and looking at my watch ("What is it?") After a while, I was being suffocated by little heads, although they were quite delightful, I could see lice jumping around in their hair so I decided to move on. I finally found my friends again and we stopped at one of the jewellery stands where Christine and I each bought strands of beads (me yellow and her blue) for 50 rupees. Later, we found out that the beads are what you wear if you are a married Hindu woman. Bijay neglected to tell us this, and we found out when on the walk to Bouddhanath people kept giving us strange looks and finally one young guy said "You married?" with a smile on his face. Woops! Haha, well I guess I will have to save my marriage beads for when I leave Nepal.
Overall Pashupati is fantastic. It is an interesting mix of the sacred and bizarre.