Ashes and Smoke

The smoke billowed thickly upward into the bright blue sky. I had been sitting there, on giant stone steps at the source of the holy Ganges River, for 3 hours, completely enthralled in what I was witnessing. I was directly across from the Golden Temple of Pashupati Nath, the birthplace of the Hindu God Shiva. And I was experiencing my first Nepali cremation.
Through the translucent clouds of smoke, I watched the faces of the family. They were all there; brothers, sisters, children, husbands, wives; all the loved ones left behind in this world. But it wasn’t like any funeral I have ever witnessed. Death in western societies seemed so cold compared to this. We spend our last minutes, days, years, in a sterile hospital room until finally death claims us. Then it’s into a box, and into eternal darkness deep within the earth. Mourning is done in silence and solitude. But here it is all out in the open. The dieing person spends their last days with their loved ones. When they die they are brought to the to this temple. There feet our dipped in the holy river while blessings are done and then the cremation process begins.
Pyres line the river’s edge, each at different stages of the cremation ritual. Street boys play in the water, diving for coins that are thrown in as offerings to the Gods. Women in brightly colored saris wash their feet in the Holy River, while other get their fortunes read or pray with a Hindu priest for a long prosperous marriage. Holy men, dressed in bright oranges, with long beards and faces covered with different colored ash, stroll through the groups of people. There was so much to watch, that I could hardly decide where to look.
As I watched the funerals taking place in the midst of all this activity, I was struck, not with a sense of grief, but with a sense of wonder. There were no black garment or silent tears. Instead the mourners all wear white, which makes them seem to glow in the hot morning sunlight. The deceased were covered with bright orange, yellow and red flowers, beautiful beads, and many candles. Despite this being a ceremony of death, there was something very alive and very natural about the whole process.

I think I could live in Nepal for my entire lifetime and never stop being surprised and amazed by things that I see and experience. Every single day there is something new to marvel at, to be shocked by, or to simply wonder about. I feel like a child again, always brimming with questions. “Why? What’s that? What does that mean? Why are they doing that?”

That's the beauty of travel. There is ALWAYS something new to learn.