I recently went to the capital of Nepal, the city of Kathmandu. My first approach into the valley itself was in my eyes amazing. The ground looked close enough touch, the mountains, riddled with homes, and sandy roads like ant trails. Green hillsides, mixed with dusty sand, embroidered with the cotton wool clouds, I could not help but feel a growing sense of excitement of what awaited me on the ground.
Our plane rode the steep mountain drafts into the valley with a tremble as if the iron bird herself, knew of the behemoth that lay on the outskirts of this valley. Alas, that backbone of the earth, the Himalayas; were shrouded by the lazy fog that hung over the valley. I would have to wait till I left to catch a glimpse of the mountains.
The city herself, seemingly hits you with a playful slap as you breath in her scent. She is a symphony of voices; talking, laughing, selling wares, punctuated with the incessant horns of her iron horses and the high pitched growls of her two wheeled rodents. Her raw scent of dust, so primal and carnal, that you could close your eyes, and still envision her every feature.
I watched children amusing themselves with the simplest of games, powered by the most rudimentary of toys, yet, in my heart, I felt sorry instead for the children I know of back home. Yes, these kids lived in grime, and want, always too cold in the winter, and forever too warm in the summer, but they mastered the most important tool of all, the imagination. They had already learnt to breed fun out of simplicity, and maybe in that sense, they were far more gifted, than the playstation touting bespectacled kids of our fine city.
There were street merchants, selling their wares on the floor, everything from blankets, jackets, shoes and food; students crowding a tea shop after school, and the sheer number of motorbikes, cars and buses that bustled around the two lane road, seemed themselves to defy the spatial laws of physics.
All these images invaded my mind, and even now as I write, I struggle to describe the bustle of humanity that flooded my senses that chilly, dusty afternoon, and I was still 10 minutes away from my hotel.
The first site of note I went to was Swayambunath, or more commonly know as the monkey temple. A religious site at the top of a hill, with 365 steep stone cut steps to maneuver to the top, and every step was worth it. In the thinner air, it was no mean feat, and one can still drive up three quarters of the hill, but meditatively, the climb itself will replace the cold in your bones with a warm tingle, and clear your mind, replacing it with a dull ache in your calves, or as they always say in those exercise infomercials; buns, hips and thighs!
But I digress; at the top of the hill, the architecture of the temple was primarily Buddhist, but bearing several distinctly Hindu features, and of course; hundreds of monkeys that seemed to have trained humans into feeding and even deifying them. I saw Buddhist prayer wheels, and faded sculptures of multi-armed deities carved into little arches in the wall, but the most impressive sight from that temple, for me, was the view.
Kathmandu city lay sprawled around the temple like a priceless hand-woven Persian carpet. From up there, with the cool wind around me, I saw many of the roads and the landmarks I would later drive past. Despite the people around me, I felt for a few moments as if I was alone as I gazed at the view before me, to my right, across the mountain range, the sun broke through the clouds like a bridge of fire to the heavens, and I watched as eagles flew across that landscape that no human artist could paint. As I let my eyes drink in the colours and details of that painting, framing it eternally in my heart, I felt for a few minutes as if I could see that valley through the eyes of one of those majestic eagles. I am not an advocate of the narcissistic and vengeful gods of mankind, but I would like to think that temple, if nothing else, was built to worship that beatific view.
I also visited Pashupatinath temple, one of the most revered Hindu sites in the world. It is a temple dedicated to the Lord Shiva and flanks the holy Bagmati River. Now, I will not behave like a typical Singaporean boy and extol the lesser virtues of this river, and instead talk about what moved me from the first time I entered the gates of this massive temple complex.
Pashupatinath is where a vast majority of Hindus go to cremate their dead traditionally, upon a pyre of wood that is tended by an undertaker. After which, following the traditional Hindu rites the remains are released into the river. The air in the temple was rich with ash, and the smell of burning wood, but despite all of that, I could not care less for the acrid smoke that rode the back of the wind.
I watched as sons placed their fathers and mothers on the wooden pedestals built by the undertakers, I watched as fathers placed their children, and I watched as husbands laid their wives on those beds of flames, and I saw how fragile, we all are. I watched the grief, and the tears, and the desperate desires of parents laying their young down to rest, still with an iota of hope that they will get up and tell them it was all an elaborate prank. I remembered my own mother that day, in that noon sun, and felt wholeheartedly the sadness of all those that stood on that bank, and for a fraction of a second, we were all one.
As I stood there and reflected, sobered in a fashion that only Death can elicit, I thought to myself that despite all the pain it causes us, Dying, is the last act of love from our most cherished ones, to remind us all to live, and to live well.
I feel there is a reason that such sites exist all around the world, and humans as a species, flock to them. I pity only those, that go to such places, and look at it only through the tiny pin-hole of their cameras, failing to partake of the sensory feast that these places provide us. There is an electric energy in the air, a low hum of inspiration, and a sense of one-ness that goes a long way in mending hearts and souls. I know that as I walked through those places to which my fellow men and women have traveled thousands of miles in pursuit of the belief of their spirituality, I felt wonderment, and amidst the hawking, the bustle, and sheer vociferousness of humanity, I still managed to find an ounce of peace. An ounce, that was well worth the journey.
