The death of a camera

Canada Day! Yesterday we got our laundry done…a big bag with two people’s really disgustingly dirty, clothes and it cost us $2.80. For that price it’s almost worth bringing dirty clothes from Canada. First thing this morning I spent several minutes just smelling my clothes…it was such a nice change.

I distinguished myself this morning by falling down in the street. No real damage…about 10 inches of road rash on one leg and a cut in one hand. Fortunately, I was wearing a skirt so I didn’t damage any clothes. Unfortunately I was wearing a skirt so there was nothing between me and the road when I hit. Hardest hit was my pride, followed by my camera. It is deceased, or as Monty Python would say, singing with the choir eternal. Fortunately it looks like the little thing where the pictures are saved wasn’t damaged, so I have all the pictures that I have taken so far, but no more from now on. I had the good fortune to fall down in front of a Pharma so we were able to get some cotton and iodine and clean up the worst of the mess. I seem to remember reading somewhere that iodine isn’t ideal as an antiseptic, but that’s what was available, so now my leg is not only injured, it has been dyed an odd shade of yellow.

We went to the Pashupatinath Temple, a Hindu temple to Lord Shiva, in the middle of Kathmandu. There is a river running through the centre of it, and funeral pyres along one side. There is a section for important people and a section downriver for ordinary people. There were two cremations going on while we were there. – the fires are tended by specially trained people, but the families stay for the entire cremation. Family members and friends throw offerings into the river during the funeral and there were small boys fishing in the river with a magnet on a string to find the coins. I guess swimming in the river seems like a better choice than starving, but I don’t think I would go into that river for any reason.

There were a number of sadhus, holy men, at the temple. They are easy to spot, their faces are painted and they are generally wearing saffron coloured robes. While they are supposed to be honoured because they are holy, they seem to have a nice little gig going, in that you can pay them to have your picture taken with them. They looked somewhat better fed than the rest of the people, which makes me cynically think that being holy is a good business.

We also got to visit Bhaktapur today. It is a very old city in the Kathmandu Valley – the whole city is a UNESCO Heritage Site. It is a centre of brick-making and pottery making. The entire town is paved with bricks, and you can wander around and see people doing traditional work….making pottery, paper and other crafts. The whole city has a very medieval feel, with open wells where people get water. There are architectural controls so that new buildings have to look like the old ones, and there is also a signficant wood carving business to create the carved windows and window frames necessary for the look. It’s the first place in Asia that I’ve ever thought that I would just like to go back and spend a week of unscheduled time.

There is a major reconstruction project going on and there were women carrying huge canvas bags of sand on their backs, supported only by a strap around their foreheads. Watching them made me think a lot about choices…while I might say that is nasty work and should be done by a machine, if it were, those women would have no income.

After we left the city, we drove up into the mountains to Nagarkot, a village on top of a mountain overlooking the Kathmandu Valley. It is famous for watching sunsets and sunrises. It was too cloudy tonight to see the sunset, but we’re going to wake up early to see the sunrise.

On the way up we saw women cutting long grass to carry home to feed cows or water buffalo. I saw two middle aged women beside the road…one had an enormous load of grass in a bundle supported by a band around her forehead, but it was so heavy that she couldn’t get up off the ground. Her friend was trying to help her get up, but they were both laughing so hard that she fell back down again . Just seeing them laughing together made me feel good for the rest of the trip.We followed a school bus much of the way up the mountain, and there were boys hanging out the door and the windows, a good reminder that people are pretty much the same everywhere in the world.

Our hotel room in Nagarkot is perched on the hillside and has a balcony that looks out across the Kathmandu Valley. We spent the evening doing not much of anything…sitting on the balcony watching it get dark, reading and listening to music. There is a little lightning in the hills across the valley, and a very few lights marking homes in the valley.