In addition to the dead, Pashupatinath draws in an interesting collection of the living. There are hawkers of religious paraphernalia like tika powder,
Tika powder
ascetics and priests
Priest
Note the badge attached to this man's shirt
Why the sticks?
and a few beggars.
Priests and beggars
How and why does someone chose to speak with a priest?
A consultation or juxtaposition?
The Bagmati flows into the Ganges, and thus for Hindu Nepalis, it is the most holy of rivers. Many chose to be cremated along side its banks. Just below the Pashupatinath temple there are numerous funeral ghats to which there is a steady stream of bodies being delivered for the sacred rite which will release the soul from the corpse.
Some bodies are brought in coffins; some are not.
A pile of coffins
A new arrival is set alongside a waiting pyre
While most of the mourners at the above cremation were men, there were more women than men at this one.
The family gathers to say its last good-bye
Once the body is set on the pyre, the mourners circumambulate the corpse counterclockwise. According to several websites on Hindu rituals, its usually the sons who do this, but in this case, the daughters did too.
Circumambulating counterclockwise
After some rituals involving materials off the tray that can be seen behind the daughters, the mouth is set fire–typically by the chief mourner who is usually the eldest son.
Setting the mouth afire
The head is covered and the outer shroud removed
Then a couple of logs are placed on top of the body, and the entire pyre is covered in straw.
By the time straw is placed on the body, the family has left
After the pyre has completely burned down to ashes, they are swept into the river.
From one of the most sacred Buddhist sites in Nepal we headed for Pashupatinath, Nepal’s most important Hindu temple, which is dedicated to Shiva.
Main Gate to Pashupatinath Temple
Pashupatinath from other side of Bagmati River
Designated a World Heritage Site, the 24m-high pagoda-roofed temple itself is closed to non-Hindus. There is historical evidence that a temple to Shiva existed at this site in 879 AD. The present temple dates from 1697.
Pagoda-style gilded rooftops of Pashupatinath
Just inside the gate it’s possible to catch a view of a giant brass statue of Shiva’s bull Nandi.
Shiva's Bull Nandi
The temple is part of a large complex of temples, ashrams, images and inscriptions raised over the centuries along the banks of the sacred Bagmati river. People come here to take ritual baths.
Want to bathe amid the garbage?
One former temple complex, the Panch Deval, is now a home for destitute old people.
Rooftops of the Panch Deval (Five Temples)
One of the oldest temples is this one.
Temple to Vasuki, King of Nagas
This one’s fairly new.
Across the river from the Pashupatinath Temple, there is a series of stone terraces with numerous small Shiva shrines.
Shiva Temples
These one-room temples are often used as lodgings by wandering sadhus (wandering ascetics) and each contains a central Shiva lingam.
Looking through a series of Shiva Temples. Note the sleeping mat.
Despite the varying styles, all have a mask of Bhairab, Shiva’s fearsome incarnation, on the south wall and a Nandi statue and animal-head water spout on the north.
Carving on Shiva Temple
Smaller carvings on a Shiva temple
Some of the buildings have very elaborate architectural details.
Carving over a doorway
Part of a door
The top panel of the above door
Lest one get the impression that everything here is worthy of the photographer’s attention, consider these views.
Southeast of the temple
Old Shiva temples on the way from the parking lot
Because so many ex-Tibetans live in the neighborhood around the Bodhnath stupa, it is an interesting mix of tourist-related services and unbridled Tibetan Buddhist culture.
Across the street from the stupa
A curious mix of golden rooftops and rooftop cafes
Souvenir vendors
Western clothing for sale
Traditional Tibetan dress for sale
Men in Western dress
The man wears a traditional Tibetan hat
Tibetan monks
We also saw a small procession, but since my guide was not Buddhist, he did not know its purpose.
The musicians followed two prayer flag bearers
They produced more noise than music
The women were well dressed
The men wore casual Western-style clothes
More than 50 monasteries are located in the neighborhood surrounding the Bouddhanath stupa. I visited the newly constructed Guru Lhakhang Gompa with huge statues of Guru Rinpoche, Sakyamuni and Avalokitesvara.
Guru Lhakhang Gompa
This gomba had some elements in common with those I visited in Bhutan–like decorative painting on the wood trim
and beautiful paintings of the deities.
But there was also something I never encountered in Bhutan, a group of students without any sense of the religious dignity of the shrine.
Play time at the giant prayer wheel
The giant bell is inscribed with Tibetan mantras.
Bodhnath (Boudha) is about 5 km from the center of Kathmandu on the old trade route to Lhasa. My guide Narayan took me to the Café Temple, where I ate lunch on the rooftop overlooking the white-domed Boudhanath stupa, the holiest Tibetan Buddhist temple outside Tibet.
Bouddhanath Stupa
The first stupa at Bodhnath was built sometime after 600 AD when the Tibetan king converted to Buddhism. (The official Nepalese government site for Bouddhanath gives a synopsis of the various legends surrounding its history and concludes that the first stupa was erected sometime between the 4th C and the second half of the 9thC.) It was destroyed by Mughal invaders in the 14thC. The current stupa is 118’ high and a World Heritage Site.
The stupa is surrounded by a wall
Around the base of the stupa, also known as Khasti, are 108 small images of the Dhyani Buddha Amitabha and a ring of 735 prayer wheels, set in groups of four or five into 147 niches. Each of the wheels is inscribed with the Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme humn.”
Niches and Prayer Wheels
Many Tibetans live in the neighborhood and come daily to pray and circumambulate the stupa.
A Woman in Traditional Tibetan Dress
Buddha eyes keep watch from each of the four sides of the square tower.
The square tower with its Buddha eyes
Behave yourself! The Nepali "1" for a nose symbolizes unity
Worshipers approaching the stairway from the base to the upper platforms are welcomed by these royal figures sitting on elephants.
Royal Greeters
On March 9th I flew from Paro in Bhutan to Kathmandu in Nepal on Druk Air. This turned out to be my best mountain-viewing flight–even better than the Everest flight-seeing tour I took a couple of weeks later.
The uniqueness of the Paro airport cannot be overstated. Finding a spot in Bhutan suitable for an airport runway is amazing.
Getting ready to take-off from Paro
Especially when one realize that most valleys aren’t even as wide and long as this one.
An unknown valley about 5 minutes after take-off from Paro
Other than Jhomalhari and Mt Everest, I’m not going to try to identify these peaks. Just enjoy the views of the “Top of the World.”
In Bhutan, probably Jhomalhari
Mt Everest is on the left
Mount Everest
I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Bhutan. Excluding a couple of days in Jerusalem and a whirlwind tour of the Soviet Union in the early 1970s that included stops in Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent, my only lengthy trip to Asia was to China and Japan in 1981. That’s a long time ago, just a few years after China began allowing Americans to visit under strictly controlled conditions. Visiting a country profoundly Buddhist like Bhutan is far different than taking a tour of Communist country that once upon a time was Buddhist. My first recommendation to anyone planning a visit to Bhutan is to learn as much as you can about Bhutanese Buddhism, especially about Guru Rinpoche and the many legends surrounding his visit to Bhutan.
As to lasting impressions, Bhutan is a land of contradictions, a country in transition from the old to the new. I’ve shown a few examples along the way, but here are two photos that focus on technology.
Old Technology: A Fire Truck
New technology: Radio, tv and cell towers
Like any third-world mountainous country, universal access to land-line telephones or over-the-air television was never an option in Bhutan. Today there certainly are places without cell reception just like in the US, but the proportion of the population with telephone access has to be many, many times what it used to be.
While significant steps have been taken to improve communications, access to electricity, education, and health care, some of the things one sees while touring Bhutan remind one of pictures from our past–like the fire truck, village water spigots, and animal-drawn plows.
In 1940 just under half of the housing units in the United States had complete plumbing facilities. While I could not find any housing statistics for Bhutan, my guess is that the percentage of Bhutanese households with complete facilities is less than that today while now less than 1% of American households lack complete facilities. Given Bhutan’s terrain and low population density, will it take the Bhutanese 60 years to achieve parity? Or do they even want parity?
What will Bhutan look like twenty years from now? Will the people be as devote as they are now? Will they embrace their new constitutional, democratic monarchy?
Despite all our socio-economic differences, Americans are very egalitarian. We firmly believe it is possible to change one’s situation in life–from poor boy to rich man, from illiterate to lawyer, from farmer to scientist, etc. We want others to have the ability to have what we have (although there are many who don’t want to pay for it even when we’re talking about basic public services like water, sewer, roads, public parks, etc.). We also believe it’s a person’s responsibility to bring about change.
Coming from this background it’s hard to envision what will happen in Bhutan. Change in Bhutan seems to be a top-down affair. The king was responsible for initiating efforts to improve education and health services. The king pushed for the change from a strict monarchy, and many were unhappy with this decision. I don’t know enough about Buddhism to know if the acceptance of one’s life as it is without thought of change (be it the basics of life such as sanitation or one’s socio-economic status) is so inherent to the religion that the people will never see their role as change agents or whether access to Western thought will bring forward thoughts of change.
If I could improve one thing about Bhutan, it would be sanitation, and I don’t just mean indoor plumbing. Perhaps the hand-washing campaign last winter as a means to avoid swine flu was overkill, or maybe it was the primary reason there was no pandemic. But, having been inundated with messages about how to avoid the spread of disease in the weeks before I left for Bhutan, the lack of such basics as a need for hand-washing with soap before handling food just jumped out at me in Bhutan (and Nepal). And do you remember what sidewalks and walking paths were like before leash laws and “clean-up after your pets” rules? Well, add cows, chickens and all other kinds of animals to the mix. Pelden implied the government was not unaware of the problem and that someone, probably similar to an agriculture extension agent, did try to work with villagers about the need to improve sanitation.
Returning to my introduction of Bhutan on this blog weeks ago: Is Bhutan Shangri-La? Yes, people seem happy, and I met noone like the young man in Travelers and Magicians who wanted to escape to New York. On the other hand, No. The Land of the Thunder Dragon has never claimed to be utopia, and it dropped its shield against the rest of the world decades ago. Looking beyond the concept of Shangri-La to the story-line of Lost Horizons, I, like Robert Conway (Ronald Coleman), had a feeling that all is not quite right here. It was a great place to visit and the people were very nice, but I missed the thought-provoking ideas and intellectual challenges ever present in American life.
With Pelden’s help we identified over 50 of the many more different species we saw. Among those we saw two endangered species–the black-necked crane and the white-bellied heron. With my little camera I only managed to capture a handful, and those aren’t great photos. So here are a few more from the web.
Rufous vented Tit
Green-backed Tit
Rufous winged Fulvetta
Snow Pigeon
Yellow-billed Blue Magpie
Yellow-bellied Fantail
White-collared Blackbird
Spotted Nutcracker
Russet Sparrow
I’ve shown numerous pictures of classic Bhutanese architecture plus a few farmhouses scattered here and there. You might ask: “Where do people like you and me live?” In the western cities like Thimphu and Paro where there has been a lot of new construction in the last decade or so to accommodate the influx of rural population, they live in buildings like these.
Thimphu apartment building
Paro apartment buildings
Some towns like Wangdi are being built anew in different locations.
The new Wangdi
Once everyone has been moved from their old dwellings to a new one, the old town will be destroyed. We went to the new town because the bank had already moved, even though few if any dwellings were complete.
Buildings under construction in the new Wangdi
Scaffolding
In rural areas, one may see the mud wall ruins of old houses
House ruins in village of Nabji
next door to new construction.
A house under construction in Nabji
New construction
It’s not unusual to find buildings with metal roofs that are kept in place with large rocks.
Metal roof with rocks