We didn’t do anything on the 11th, while waiting for Jennifer’s feet to improve, although I did go for fairly long walk past the Kali temple in Tokha along a trail which wound its way through the pine forests on the northern rim of the Kathmandu Basin. I didn’t get to the top because the mist started coming down. Jennifer didn’t want to see Pashupatinath, the main Hindu temple in Kathmandu, on account of the menacing sadhus and the gruesome funeral pyres. Dating from about 400 AD, it is said to be the oldest and one of the holiest Hindu temples in South Asia. It cost 1,000 rupees to get in to the complex of about 500 temples and other religious structures as a foreigner and then (as non-Hindu) I couldn’t enter two of the main temples. I was harassed by sadhus who wanted me to pay them for taking a picture of them. Sadhus are wandering ascetic yogis, who are trying to acquire liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth by meditating. When I came with Cyrus in 2014 we got a guide (who was actually very entertaining) who told us two seemingly contradictory stories about the sadhus: that they are actually rich businessmen from Mumbai and that they become a sadhu by tying rosewood blocks round their genitals, soaking them with paraffin and setting fire to them. I have decided not to become a sadhu. I agreed to have a bindi (red spot) painted on my forehead before being told of the exorbitant price. The funeral ghat was a disappointment with a big bale of straw giving off thick white smoke, The most interesting item at the complex was the troupe of monkeys. I put my phone away after watching a monkey purloin a tourist’s phone as they were taking a picture and bounding away across the rooftops.
Adi Shankaracharya math. Adi Shankar was an 8th century Vedic scholar from Kerala in southern India
Pigeons , said t be sacred birds
Main temple
The holy Bagmati River and the 15 Shivalayas
Buddha statue
Bringing firewood for the funeral ghats
