Stupas, Temples, and Games Kids Play
Trip Start
Jun 07, 2008
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87
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Trip End
Jun 28, 2009
Kathmandu,
Nepal
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
At the Stupa, there was music playing all the time, the chant of Buddhism which is "I delight in all that is beautiful in you", and sounds something like "Om badi om be dum" over and over again. Buddha did not want people to worship him, but believed you had to find religion in yourself. There were lots of prayer flags blowing around (red means fire, blue means water, green means earth, white means space and clouds, and yellow means the sun, I think) that looked cool
Us at the Stupa
. We also looked at a Thanka painting of the Wheel of Life, that is in every monastery and saw how they did the paintings. Families from the Tamang tribe do these paintings and they show how if you are bad, you end up in hell and if you are good, you can achieve nirvana, which is like heaven. It takes 22 years to be a master of Thanka painting.We then went to the Hindu temple, Swayambhunath, where they do all the cremations in Katmandu and there is a holy river. We walked up a mountain past a lot of monkeys and some holy men (they wear orange robes and paint their bodies white and have long hair) to a place where we could look at the temple and river. It was kind of like Varanasi in India, but a lot smaller and cleaner. There were lots of people bathing in the river, but they were from India, not Nepal. The Nepal government said that it is not healthy to bathe in the river, so people from Nepal don't do it anymore. We also watched a little girl, who was about 3, get her head shaved by her parents. They said they were giving her hair to the temple. She was not very happy!
There were also the bodies of two people who had died in the last 24 hours that were about to be cremated. We saw the fires. We watched the family bathe the feet of one of the bodies in the river, then cover it with red dust, then other things, then finally with lots of yellow marigold flowers
Cremation about to start
. They then took it to be burned, but we did not watch. In Nepal, women can come to the cremation, but have to leave before the fire is started, and people can cry and be sad at the cremation. But like in India, if someone is a widow, she has a very sad life. She can't go to festivals or do lots of things after her husband dies. I am glad my Gram Judi is not a Hindu. She has a very good life.We saw a boy my age playing in the river in a wooden box that they use to carry bodies - that was weird. The water is still very dirty. We also saw a school for kids who are homeless - there are lots of kids here who have to work and can't go to school so it was nice to see it.
In the afternoon, we drove to Bhaktapur, which is an ancient town from 464AD. It was much smaller than Katmandu and we walked around the streets looking at the shops and buildings and temples. We had lunch in a cool old rest house that looked out at a huge temple, with lions, elephants, dragons and other things in front of it. We saw the place where they make pottery and we watched them grind rice and other things at a small mill. Mostly, I watched kids playing different games. Even though most kids don't have any toys, the kids here all seem to play lots of games. These are some of the ones I saw:
* Kids playing marbles
* Tag
* Hide and seek
* Rolling tires and wheels with sticks
* Badminton in the streets
* Swinging on cloth they had tied between buildings
* Jumping rope
* Playing the rubberband game or bouncing a rubberband ball
Me and a Sadhu
.Some kids asked me to play the rubberband game. Here is how you play: You have a lot of round black rubberbands (they cost 10 rupee which is 20 cents in the US). Each player gets some rubber bands, then you try to throw them at a line. If you hit the line, you can keep it, and if you hit the other person's rubber band, you can take it. The person with the most rubber bands wins. It was a lot of fun!
Finally, we went to the oldest temple in Nepal that was way up a mountain - we watched the sunset over Nepal. There were also lots of kids there playing tag. Sangeeta told us about all the Hindu gods again - Ganesha who is always at the front of the temple, Vishnu whose vehicle is a wheel, Garuda, who has wings and guards people, the justice god, Shiva, and others. There was also a partly carved stone elephant that is now holy because they said that when they were carving it, it poured out blood. I am not sure that is true.
It was a long drive back - there are huge traffic jams in Katmandu and because of load-sharing, there were no lights and mostly candles in all the buildings. It is very sad that they don't have enough electricity - it makes it hard for kids to study at night and do their homework, Sangeeta said.
Tomorrow we fly to Pokhara and closer to the Himalayas!
