Photorama

Tomorrow is (the Hindu deity) Shiva's birthday, and because he is very popular here people are going to be celebrating and praying in their thousands (an expected 1 million people are to visit a temple near us called Pashupatinath). So I thought I would wander down this morning to see if anything was going on.

It was.

I arrived just as a long line of saddhus (holy men) were walking past, along with school kids, women groups and, quite notably, some ladies wearing kilts and playing the bagpipes (!). The snapping had begun!

I followed them around as they marched and they kept chanting a word loudly and breaking into a sprint. No idea why but it seemed quite fun :-)

We ended up at the main temple where I had slight palpatations at the number of saddhus around, so I had my pick of so really rather far out doods to take pictures of. Mega. Then I met the lady saddhus, all sitting together. These are a rarer breed than there male counterparts and seemed quite a bit more cheerful (and didn't expect cash for photos). In return I bought 2kgs of beaten rice to hand out. They were great fun, laughing and joking and were grateful for the food.

The holy lady pictured was a little dolally, in a nice way, and was trying to poke me in the eye with her oversized Shiva's trident. That doesn't happen very often, she she gets the Blip!

For lunch we were invited to eat with our host family, who cooked a stunning dahl bhat, which I ate Nepali style (hands only). Yum.

In the afternoon, just to up the culture count, we visited the monastery school we taught at to see the monks from Mustang doing a "Lama Dance", where they wear big masks and colourful clothes and dance around to the cymbals clashing and horns blowing.

Very exciting stuff!

We then had a Skype with friends in the UK (hello Barry! hello Angela!) which was cool and then watched "Lincoln" before passing out.

(Eye is getting worse, more swollen and red and itchy. It is my camera eye so it wasn't too easy taking pictures today...)