Tihar part 4: Happy New Year!

There are a few different calendars in Nepal and sometimes I need to use the Nepali calendar, such as for paying my phone bill. According to the Newari calendar, Wednesday, November 14th was the beginning of the year 1133.

My friend and I went to Durbar Square early on Wednesday to see a New Year celebration. The rally began around 8am, with different school and family groups marching though Basantapur. Women and men were dressed in traditional clothing and many people played drums or flutes.

After everyone had paraded hrough Durbar Square, there was also a motorcycle rally with vehicles traveling on a route around the city centers of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. My friend told me that this year there were fewer motorcycles than before...I mainly saw decorated cars and trucks!

Tihar, Part 3: Laxmi and Lights

On the third day of Tihar, Laxmi the Goddess of Wealth received special recognition by families and businesses. I was invited to a friend's business, where all the staff did pooja for Laxmi and made a trail of marigolds from outside the store to the inside, to a place where offerings to Laxmi were set up. It was so special to be included in the Laxmi pooja and to learn more about this day.

Everyone also decorates their doorways with patterns of decorative powders and lights or candles. A line is drawn from the street through the entrance of the house or business, in order to welcome Laxmi and the prosperity she brings.

After being a part of the pooja at my friends business, I went for a long walk all around Patan and Durbar Square to see what other families had set up to welcome Laxmi. It is so pretty to see all the streets lit up with twinkle lights and to see the different designs families made outside their homes.

There was one giant design that a group of artists had made completely of the decorative powders, in honor of Laxmi.

Tihar Part 2: Cows and Dogs

A part of Tihar, there are different days to celebrate dogs (Kukur Tihar) and cows (Gai Tihar). Garlands of marigolds were placed around their necks and red tikka on their heads. For dogs, the day recognized the special bond between humans and dogs, so they were also treated to good food. I noticed that the dogs that live around my street seemed extremely content and well fed on their day.

Wednesday, the cows were recognized in the morning for their importance of bringing prosperity and wealth. That same evening the Goddess of wealth, Laxmi, is also recognized - but I'll write about this more in my next post, Part 3. 

Tihar Part 1: shopping and sweets

This past week there has been a festival throughout Nepal, called Tihar. Tihar is also known as Deepawli amongst Hindu families and there are specific days of the festival that are dedicated to different Gods. However, Tihar is celebrated by all ethnic groups here and it was fun for me to be able to join with my friends here.

According to the astrological calendar, Tihar was a little short this year, but it is normally a five day festival. On each day, people respect specific Gods and their own bodies, in addition to certain animals - crow, cow and dog.

Compared to the Dashain festival where much of the celebration took place within family homes, Tihar created a very festive atmosphere throughout Kathmandu. Right before the festival started, the streets were packed with people shopping for decorations and family gifts, and a market appeared of marigold wreaths, flowers and decorative colored powders. On Monday and Tuesday, I enjoyed strolling around New Road and Ason market just to see what everyone was buying.

 

 My friend and I went to buy samosas for lunch at the Tip Top Samosa place, but discovered that it had temporarily been transformed into a sweet shop for Tihar! After a split second of hesitation, we decided to postpone lunch and just try different Nepali sweets instead. This is what I bought:

My favorite was actually the one on the top right, which had a pastry exterior, but we devoured them all.

Throughout Tihar, I ended up eating so many sweets. They were used throughout pooja (offerings or prayers) and were also a part of the meals that I ate.

Swayambhu Temple and the White Monastry

This past Saturday morning a colleague invited me to drive to two different sights around Kathmandu. He and his daughter picked me up around 8:30am and we went straight to Swayambhunath to beat the crowds. The stupa is located on top of a hill and people climb over 360 stairs to the top (unless they have a car that is...).

Swayambhunath is also sometimes referred to as Monkey Temple, for obvious reasons...

We walked around the stupa in a clockwise circle once before leaving and we looked at all the smaller ancient stupas located there as well.

Next we headed to the White Monastry, which was located high on a hill past Swayambhu. This Buddhist monastry mostly has female Buddhist nuns living on the grounds and it is only open to visitors on Saturdays. I really recommend taking a car if you go, because it is an extremely steep road up a very high hill to get there! 

Inside the building in the above photo, the women were gathered to do their morning prayers. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take photos inside, but I could enter and watch their prayers - it was one of the most fascinating things I've seen. Before even taking off my shoes and entering the building, I could hear the sound of drumming. Inside, the women were sitting in rows, maybe 12 rows of 10 women each, with the rows split so they faced the center of the room. All the women wore dark maroon robes, had shaved heads and they sang in unison, while other women sitting at the front played drums and bells.

I've visited one other monsastry (Kopan) but I arrived later in the day, missing the morning prayers, so this was a complete surprise to me on Saturday. I would never have known to come here unless I'd been invited to go for a drive, but I would recommend a visit to others.

Lord Shiva and Nepali sweets

This past weekend I went to a town called Sanga, which has the world's tallest Lord Shiva statue at 143 feet. A few friends and I went to check it out and had a relaxing day by picnicking nearby. There actually wasn't very much to do there (unless you visit the 'diet center' or get a massage at the spa near the statue).

As we walked back down through the small town, I noticed some stores selling Nepali sweets called Titaura (a bit like jelly candy) that I hadn't tried before and decided to give them a taste. I see them packaged in stores around Kathmandu, but here the shops were making the sweets by themselves.

I found one group of women who were making a large quantiy of these sweets, by drying out the fruit in the sun and reshaping it by hand.

Almost every surface of their property were covered with trays of these sweets.

They are made from a fruit called 'lapsi', which I had also never eaten before, and the titaura can come naturally sweet or with spicy flavoring. I'd recommended the sweet lapsi titaura if you ever need a sugar kick! Between me and my three friends, the titaura we purchased was eaten really quickly...the only one we didn't eat was the one smothered in sticky chilli sauce.

Bandipur

Bandipur is a small hilltop town that has beautifully preserved it's culture and, more recently, the town has begun to encourage tourism. There are no vehicles of any kind in the main town (essentially one street) and the architecture style makes you feel like you've dropped back in time.

Leaving Pokhara, we took a bus to the town Dumre, where we then hired a jeep to drive us up to Bandipur.

After dropping off our bags at a hotel, we decided to go for a hike to a nearby town called Ramkot. This actually turned out to be one of my highlights of the whole trip, so I'd recommend it to others! Ramkot is very small and there are no shops to buy anything, etc, so we packed a lunch and water and started the 1 1/2 hour walk to the town...seeing a few local women working or herding buffalo and plenty of mountains views along the route.

There was a Buffalo sacrifice happening in Ramkot when we first arrived and many people were out watching and chatting with each other. I just strolled around (honestly, I didn't want to look at the dead buffalo for very long) and observed the small town with traditional thatched round houses, many children playing, men sitting together chatting, flowers, etc, and the mountains were a backdrop to everything.

The walk to and from Ramkot, plus time strolling the village, took us about four hours. Next we walked around the main street of Bandipur and took a rest at a local cafe.

The buildings had the traditional wooden windows and the street felt so peaceful without any motorcycles or cars. We also had some nice dhal baat at a restaurant in the main street and enjoyed people watching.

Our hotel was maybe a 5 minute walk outside of main Bandipur and you have to walk through a few local huts to get there. It was actually fun staying away from other tourists and I had a great sunset view of mountains from my room window.

The next morning we woke up very early again to watch the sun rise. The morning was pretty cloudy and we couldn't see the mountains very clearly, but the landscape looked so beautiful and mysterious, with a sea of clouds below us.