Teej

As I mentioned in my previous blog, Teej, another Nepali festival was recently celebrated. Teej is a three day festival where women who are unmarried pray for a good husband to come along and women who are married to pray for their husbands. I, obviously, had to participate because I am husbandless. HAHA. Anyways, I did actually participate by going with Shusila to two huge temples: Pashupatinath and Swayambunath. Meredith stayed home to pretend to work.

It’s amazing how many people you meet when you are constantly getting lost and have no idea how to get places. On my way to meet Shusila at Pashupatinath I ended up chatting with a nerdy Nepali guy who helped lead me to my destination and called Shusila on his cell phone for me. The frustrating part is that I always have the same exact conversations with these people I meet: “I’m from America. California. I live in Sanepa. I volunteer at a theater called Aarohan. A theater, like Shakespeare. I am here for five months. I’ve been here for me one month. Yes, I look like a boy.” Then I ask them some questions: “You live in this area. You are from this caste. Your family is from this village. You have this job. You are/n’t married.” It’s hard to steer the conversation towards anything else but these topics. Probably because of their limited English and something sociological I don’t understand.

Anyhow, Teej. Everyone wears red Punjabi suits and red saris and red bracelets and red. I stupidly wore no red, so Shusila and I immediately went to go get some red jewelry.



We then wandered around Pashupatinath. This temple is famous because it’s where Hindu’s cremate their dead. It’s right along the river and at any given time you can see smoke stacks indicating a burning body. Walking around the various temples at Pashupatinath actually requires some small hiking and Shusila showed major skills by walking around in her heels. Here’s a aerial view of some human smoke:



Hundreds of women were waiting in an enormous line to get into the temple to pray. Shusila said that these lines are hours long and people wait all day. Also, everyone is fasting on this first day of Teej, so they are waiting in a long line in the sun while hungry. The not-so-dedicated fasters will eat fruit and ice cream and the super-dedicated fasters will spit so as not to swallow even their saliva. Women in red waiting in line and fasting:



Shusila and I then took a few buses over to the other side of town where the Buddhist stupa Swayambunath is. I’m not sure why she took me over there because Teej is a Hindu holiday, but nonetheless, I was excited to see this stupa. Here’s us on the bus:



Swayambunath is known as the monkey temple for obvious/awesome reasons. The monkeys rule the area and look adorable doing it. OH, NOOOOOO:



Below is a picture of a Buddha and me. I look tired and sweaty because Swayambunath is on a horribly vertical hill with thousands of steps up to the main stupa. Luckily, there are tons of souvenirs and monkeys lining the steps to pretend to stop and look at.



I enjoyed Teej and hopefully will get an awesome husband delivered to me soon.

Tomorrow, Meredith and I leave for Bandipur and Pokhara at 6:30am. I’m not sure how long we’ll be there, maybe for a week depending on how much fun it is. I’m also not sure what the internet access will be like there, so blogging may be on a temporary hold.

I salute the divine beings in you all, for now.