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Asia Update 14:  Nepal – The Carnival of Gods

November 2004

Zooming up the road in a rattletrap Toyota, possibly the first model ever made, I try to ignore the taxi driver’s frantic pitching (We-have-nice-hotel-miss-Very-nice-best-hotel! If-you-no-likeit-I-take-where-you-like-OK? Verygood-best-hotel-you-will-see-justhave-look! Bestroom-bestprice-OK-we-go-nicehotel-now…) We lurch along to this monotonous tune through a rollicking stream of motorbikes, trucks, taxis, rickshaws and buses, bounce over lunarscape potholes, careen around ditches, dodge cows, monkeys, chickens, bicycles and beggars. All I can see beyond the immediate road hazards is a thick, polluted haze engulfing the city like fog...Katmandu.

The Thamel district is a chaotic neon carnival spiraling through impossibly crowded alleys. Storefronts overflow with fake yak wool blankets in psychedelic colors, Tibetan rugs, glittering gems, dusty “antiques”, trekking gear, t-shirts, and truckloads of tacky souvenirs. Packed in between the shops are countless tour agencies, hotels, bars, Mexican restaurants, German bakeries. I stroll through the maze at dusk, gagging on kerosene-laced fumes and dizzied by the ceaseless racket. Rickshaws and taxis swoop close enough to shave my legs. Dogs bark, horns blare, children shriek, slick-haired shopkeepers throw their verbal nets into the fete. “We have whatever you want”, one barker assures me, “Here, Guest is God.” Street vendors waggle everything from fruit to wooden flutes to house wares under my nose. Beggars pluck at my sleeves, young boys in dirt-encrusted jeans float by in the dark hissing, “Haashhheeshhh…” Humped old women, crawling tortoise-like under heaping baskets of handicrafts, grin toothlessly and beckon me with spindly fingers, “Cheap, very cheap!” I feel like Snow White in an enchanted orchard of apple-sellers. We are all promenading to an endless, surround-sound chorus of “Namaste! Namaste!” an enigmatic greeting that means: I salute the god within you.

From this limited vantage point, Katmandu is a gallery of performers, charlatans and fakirs, vagrants and orphans. Every time I turn around, I’m being hustled: by taxi and rickshaw drivers (naturally), by so-called holy men, by tour agents and trekking guides, by shopkeepers and street kids. Everyone has a racket. In the morning, I attempt to circumvent some of this lunacy by taking a roundabout path to the Royal Palace. It’s a quiet walk for a few brief moments, but then two deranged, bug-eyed evangelists set upon me, swaddled in tangerine bed sheets. Babbling incoherently, they surround me, bobbing up and down and sideways like marionettes gone mad. Before I can escape, they smash marigold petals in my hair and daub my forehead with red tika powder.

“Baksheesh! Baksheesh!” they shriek, holding out their oily palms for money, “Lucky, lucky!” Irritated, I toss them a 20-rupee note (less than 30 cents), the only small change I have. Their eyes bulge simultaneously and I know it is too much.

“More!” They demand in unison, “We give much lucky—you give more money!”

“I don’t need so much lucky,” I reply. “I didn’t order this voodoo dance, and 20 rupees is plenty enough luck for me”. I fix them with my best Stern Look and brush past. When I glance back, they are scuffling over the tattered pink bill, bony arms flailing, bed sheets billowing.

In the next Act, two young boys appear beside me on Durbar Marg. They ask if they can walk along with me and practice English. Dubiously, I agree and am quickly charmed by 16-year-old Krishna. He claims he can name the capital of any country in the world, plus the capitals of all fifty States. We walk and play the geography game until I’m naming countries so obscure to me (Estonia?) that I can only assume his rapid-fire answers are correct--I don’t actually know. His buddy Himal follows along silently. Once we’ve circled back to the palace, Krishna inquires,

“Where are your group? What is your plan for today?”

I admit that I have no group, and no plan. This is a normal state of affairs for me.

“Then we are your group”, he pronounces grandly. “So, today we will go to Pashupatinath, the most important Hindu temple in Nepal, and also to Bhouda — biggest stupa in Nepal and second biggest in the world.”

Sometimes it’s useful to have a group, and a plan. It’s a long, polluted hike out to Pashupatinath, built on a hill on the edge of town. On the way, Krishna quizzes me on the Hindu pantheon, including his namesake.

“What do you know about the god Krishna?” he asks.

“Uhhh…he’s the blue one, right?” I’m woefully unprepared for this.

“Yes, that is Krishna—the playboy,” he notes impishly. I inquire whether like his mythical namesake he has many girlfriends.

“I had one, but not right now,” he replies, “Nepali girls don’t allow kissing, so we divorce.”

As we approach Pashupatinath, loud chattering seems to emanate from the trees. Soon there are at least a hundred rowdy macaques swinging from the branches and bounding up and down the path ahead of us. They range from cuddly-looking babies to baboon-like males who bare their incisors at us as we enter their territory.

“Don’t touch them or stare at their eyes,” Krishna advises, “they bite.”

We make our way carefully through the flying monkey guard along the Bagmati River, where people are bathing and washing clothes in bubbly brown sludge. The inner temples are off limits to me, Krishna explains matter-of-factly, “…because you are a Christian cow-eater.” I’m actually not either of those things, but I’m not Hindu either so it’s a moot point.

We wander the hilly grounds and sculpture gardens, stopping at the top to view the sacred cremation site on the river below. The holy fires are roaring and while I am thankfully too far away to identify any barbecued body parts through the smoke, the smell is decidedly unappetizing.

Moving on, my young guides point to a narrow stone doorway, beyond which Krishna says there is “a sanctuary”. I duck into the courtyard alone, unprepared for a hallucinogenic encounter with a dozen saddhus—half-naked, dreadlocked holy men grinning wildly through blackened and missing teeth, their faces festively painted with ashes and tika. Traditionally, saddhus renounce all property, work, and human relationships to devote themselves to the god Shiva. They survive on alms, wandering from temple to temple with nothing more than their robes, a walking stick, and a few symbolic items such as a conch shell or a string of prayer beads…or in the case of this group, I notice, a huge brick of hash. No wonder they’re all grinning maniacally. They gesture for me to come closer and share a Kodak moment with them, but the aroma of unwashed saddhus is even more powerful than that of the burning dead…must be off now, thanks anyway.

Our tour breaks for a round of warm orange Fanta, and then the boys accompany me along the narrow dirt road to Boudhanath. We’ve left the carnival strip now, passing through subdued slums. Extended families inhabit roofless, burned-out buildings, drawing water from the same murky streams they defecate into. A few skinny goats and bedraggled chickens fend for themselves among the trash heaps.

“This is real Nepal,” Krishna says. “Thamel is not Nepal”.

“I know that”, I offer weakly, but don’t know what else to say. I’ve gathered that Krishna and Himal have a home, although it isn’t with their families. They appear healthy and clean, and they both go to school. When I inquire about their parents, Krishna replies vaguely that his are in the country, where they make a living by “farm, or something”. He clearly doesn’t like to answer such questions. When I ask who is supervising them, Krishna-the-clever replies, “You are”.

The three of us circle the stupa clockwise in the customary fashion, idly clicking prayer wheels as we go. Turning the wheel is supposed to activate the mantra sealed inside, releasing incantations to heaven. Tibetan shops surround the temple and Crayola-colored prayer flags flap in the breeze. Krishna explains proudly that in Nepal, all religions co-exist in tolerance. I ask him what religion he follows.

“If I go to Christian church, I pray to Christian God,” he says, “If I am in the mosque, pray to Allah. If Hindu temple, then Hindu gods, and if stupa, then Buddha—all same to me.”

I tell him I like his attitude and that it’s good to keep an open mind.

“I think just one god, it’s not enough”, he replies philosophically, “we need all gods for all people.”

We return to Thamel, where I treat Himal and Krishna to fried momo and more soda for lunch. When they ask me to buy them two large cans of powdered milk, I’m caught off guard. I ask what the milk is for and Krishna shrugs, “for my family”, looking at the ground. With gracious goodbyes and thank you, didi (sister) they disappear up the road, arms entwined, lugging the heavy bag of milk. I suspect they will sell it around the next corner and pocket the cash, which I would have given them anyway. It’s unclear who is supposed to feel better about the milk contrivance--me, or them? Disconcerted, I stare after them until an elderly saddhu wobbles toward me, palm extended, howling,

“Namaste! BakshEEEEEEESH!”

Just another day in the Carnival of Gods.

(c) 2004, Laurie Weed. All rights reserved.