travel essay: pashupatinath temple

*Trigger warning: I talk about watching a Hindu cremation in this post. There are photos. If this is going to upset you, please do not read this post!*

The sun is high in the sky as my taxi slowly navigates the pockmarked streets of Kathmandu. I’m heading to Pashupatinath Temple, along the river, site of cremations, for the afternoon. I don’t know what to expect, although my friends have told me that there are cremations here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

pashupatinath temple

It’s not entirely clear to me, when I arrive, where I am supposed to go. The taxi drivers barely speaks English, but he points down a market street, so I wander in that direction. Stalls are selling everything from bronze singing drums and beaded necklaces to ice creams, and warm soft drinks. There is a cow in the road as well, and everyone – including the motorbikes – just swerves around it.

As I get closer to a cluster of buildings, I look to my right and see what looks like a temple. The closer I get, the more I am sure I’m in the right place. That fact is cemented when a guard steps out and asks me to pay. 1000 rupees, which is about $10. Everyone else (read: the locals) are just walking in. But, it’s $10 and while that’s more than I typically spend in a day here, it’s not breaking the bank.

I tuck the ticket in my bag as a man steps up next to me and asks me where I’m from. I say I’m from the US and that I don’t need a guide. He says, “why do you assume I am a guide? It isn’t nice to assume”

Buddy, because you all are guides. I’m not an idiot.

Then he says I can have a free tour, and I laugh and walk away. It won’t be free and we both know it.

He doesn’t follow me as I slip into the temple complex. I follow the bridge across and wander slowly up the steps. Hindu men with brightly painted faces wave to me, I can take a photo. Of course, I don’t… because the minute I do, they’ll want money. Instead, I take photos of the monkeys (the men just *happen* to be in the background).

I continue walking up the steps. A group of people are running at a wall, their hands placed palms together, pointed at a hole in the wall. I look about, but they gesture that I can walk through and I do… I see it later at the monkey temple and I have no idea what it’s about. Up at the top, there are tons of small temples with etchings of Hindu gods. I come across three girls who give me alternating names and then ask me for money and chocolate. I have neither, but I also don’t take a photo. The oldest girl shows me her sister’s head, it is swollen and bright red with a rash.

I feel bad, but I can’t do anything. I don’t know what to do.

They run off then, into a trash-strewn field behind the wall. I circle out among the buildings and then there are shouts. Men come running from all directions; they’ve got a man apprehended, his arms are twisted behind his back and there are men carrying metal pipes and thick rope. They herd him toward a wall and I’m afraid that I’ll witness a beating, or worse. There are people everywhere though, and it appears that they decide to take him away. He’s herded through another doorway, away from the temple and I lose sight of him. No one around me speaks English, so I can’t ask what happened but I’m also quite sure I don’t want to know.

There are dogs everywhere. I have to double check them to make sure they are breathing. They’re lying under the temple walls, in the shade and in the sun. It’s pretty clear which ones are related, although I suspect that all dogs in KTM are related somehow.

I head back toward the steps now, happy to wander in the shade. There is smoke rising from below and I am a curious little lion. The Hindu men motion to me again but I shake my head with a smile. I watch a monkey jump along a power line and then I walk closer to the river.

rituals

A cremation is about to start. The body is lying on a flat metal ladder at the river’s edge, wrapped in a white sheet. Several men cluster around the body. Someone sets a large white sheet on the ground and they move the body from the carrier to the sheet. They place an orange cloth over it, then remove the white wrapping. It looks like it takes some effort to unwrap the body while not really moving it much. A face appears. From a distance, I can’t see it well, but it’s an old lady with shocking white hair. A loud keening starts and I look closely for the source. There are two women, probably mid fifties, both being supported by others and I suspect they are the daughters and the source of the wailing. They are wrapped in white, the colour of mourning.

Once the body is unwrapped, another orange cloth goes on top. She is then shifted to an inclined cement platform, feet facing the river. A man washes her feet. And then, one by one, the women come down to place a coin on her forehead, mark her with red powder, and kiss her feet. The men are still close and they assist. One holds the feet together to let the women kiss them, another hands coins to the women as they come forward. The daughters go first, then the aunties, and finally the rest. Lastly, all the men do the same.

After everyone has done it, she is shifted to a bamboo ladder and they begin to layer cloths and orange flower garlands on top of her. Incense burns around her as they work.

While they’re doing this, another body is brought forward to the inclined platform. They leave the body there while they layer it with cloths and garlands. But the striking difference between these two celebrations is that in the second one, there are no women. It is also much faster and they take the body away to the other side of the temple complex before the first family is done with the cloth layering.

Finally, the men finish placing the garlands on top of her and people begin to move. The daughters, actually all of the women, have been sitting along the side of the temple while the men work and now they stand. The two daughters come to the front of the procession with bags of rice and the men hoist the bamboo ladder to their shoulders. They move slowly toward the bridge that I’m standing on and since I want to be respectful, I slip my phone into my pocket. No photos of this although other tourists are snapping away. Personally, I think its disrespectful but I also don’t want to sound pretentious and bitchy if I ask them to put their cameras away. The shutter makes such a loud sound even in the din of the wailing and keening from the daughters.

saffron powder

As the procession passes in front of me, the daughters are strewing rice along their path. I see the woman’s face up close. She is covered in red and orange powder. Red is a powerful colour in Hinduism, so is orange/saffron. Both symbolise purity. Because this ritual took much longer than the other one, and because the woman is literally sheathed in saffron clothes, I suspect she must have been a higher caste, but I don’t know. Soon, the procession is gone and I walk down along the river the way they came. Red powder litters the ground and the incense is still burning. Children and picking up the coins that fell from her body when the men shifted her.

Trash, too, litters the path. There are dogs picking at it, snapping at each other, and running down the riverbank. I reach the end and turn around. Smoke is rising from the other side of the bridge and so I wander back that way, avoiding the packs of kids that run toward me, yelling as they pass by toward the hill.

A young man is standing in the river pulling burned pieces of wood from it. He stacks them one on top of the other at the edge of the river. I overhear a guide telling two travellers that it’s not his job, he just does it. He’ll probably dry the wood out and then sell it to another burial. I wrap my scarf further around my face, shielding my mouth from the smoke. It doesn’t smell; it could just be a fire, but it’s a cremation and while I’m not queasy, I’m aware that it’s a body burning. I step to the edge of the bridge and watch. There are no family members anymore, but a man is constantly fueling the flame. He adds more wood, stokes it with a bamboo pole.

*click*

The click of a camera breaks into my thoughts and I see about seven tourists standing on a higher ledge looking down on the body. They all have cameras. I’m so hesitant to take photos but I know that I’ll regret not doing so. I click away at the monkey sitting in front of me, peeling an orange with its teeth, and the Hindu men sitting on the steps across the river smoking. Then, quickly so as not to offend, I snap two photos of the cremation. The feet stick out from the pyre, a hand lays limp on the side. It is somber.

Instead of staring, I watch the monkey finish his orange. And then, finally, I leave. The funeral I watched is nowhere to be seen, and the second body awaits burning; it is on a platform a few metres down but there is no one there. As I leave the temple complex, I see a woman pulling bricks from a pile of rubble. She expertly throws them into the basket on her back, held taut by a strip of burlap that goes across her forehead. Signs of progress, of rebuilding Kathmandu, while the ancient rituals of Hinduism continue within the walls of Pashupatinath Temple.

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