Nepál 2013 – Kathmandu

Although, I’m more interested in the nature and animals photography I’d like to share some thoughts and pictures from my recent visit to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. At the end of March I set out together with my friend Jan Brož to the Bardia National Park in Nepal and because the only international airport is in Kathmandu, we had to spend there some time.

Just a short introduction. Nepal, former British colony, was a kingdom until 2008. After the deposition of the king, Nepal is now a republic. Official name is Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Population is about 26 million and in the Kathmandu lives around 2.5 million of citizens.
In the poor country communists (Maoists) are stronger and stronger, the government does not look very capable, most of the money goes to the army and/or corruption.
From my point of view the city is frozen in the time of 20-30 years ago. Since that time, probably no new buildings were built, no roads, no reconstructions.
A lot of roads, even in the city center, are dusty, with no asphalt but a lot of holes. And the traffic itself is terrible 🙂

Power outage is something pretty common here and also it looks that a lot of building don’t even have an access to sewage system. We went on foot to one of the very interesting temples (Monkey Temple) and so had to go through the city and saw a couple of non-turistic places. The river flowing in the middle of city serves also as a disposal site. Uncredible amount of rubbish, pigs looking for something to eat, dead cow. Very interesting but smelly experience.

And in the areas without a river, garbage is simple thrown onto the street.

So, I kind of think if somebody comes to Nepal to see mountains and breathe clean air, all this is compensated by the pollution in Kathmandu 🙂

Well, enough of the garbage, let’s look at some sights.
Normally, I’m not very interested in castles, temples and so on (except as a goal of a family trip) but here I wanted to visit one special place. The temple Pashupatinah. It is similar to Varanasi in India but smaller, the sacred place of all budhists and hinduists. The river Bagmati flows through the temple and there are a couple of ghats on the river bank. A ghat is a place where hinduists can burn bodies of their dead relatives. Tourists (all non-hinduists) can’t enter the temple but can watch everything from the other side of the river.

Bodies are lying on the wood pile, the rest of the family is crying. Very strong but also strange experience. Something that is very difficult to understand. And also something very private.
When a body is burned, its remains are thrown into the river, so the circle of life can continue.

To see burning dead bodies wan’t the reason why I came here. My goal was something else. Actually, not something but somebody. I wanted to see sadhus – holy men that are meditating here. They spend their day sitting and meditating and they live only from gifts from the people. So, I really wanted to make a picture, a portrait, of this holy man.
For me it is something quite difficult as I don’t usually photograph people. I don’t know how and always feel bad when doing that. But I really wanted to make an exception here and ask one of them to pose for a second. Obviously, I was prepared to pay something 🙂

The reality was quite different. Much worse than I expected. Even before I got my camera out of the bag, one of the holy men was here. And immediately started posing like true professional. I really did not expect this. I thought they would be sitting and meditating and such a request would disturb them. But that’s not true. They are so used to pose to tourists that I think the idea of a holy man is very very far in the background.
That wasn’t what I wanted, so I just made two or three pics and ran away.
Ah, sure I gave him some money. Thinking of it now, it was quite expensive. And also the most negative experience I had here. I gave him a couple of euros or dollars but he looked it is still not enough. So, I’ve added a couple of US quarters and holy man basically refused them. The value was too small for him!

That was my experience in Pashupatinah 🙂

This is all for now I think. Next time it will be again about nature and animals, I promise 🙂