Friday, February 4, 2011

Visits to Hindu and Buddhist Holy Sites

We do most of our exploring of Kathmandu on our early morning walks. Just near us in the Sanepa district is a bridge across the Bagmati River. There is a path that goes down to the river. The river itself is disgusting. The homeless are living in makeshift housing and everyone dumps their garbage into, not to mention that the sewer system dumps into the river unsanitized! But along the river here are ghats. These are worship sites and platforms for Hindu cremation. The worship sites have statues of their many gods where the people come to do puja (worship).

Yesterday, Vijay took us to Pashupahti (sp?), one of the top pilgrimage and cremation sites of the Hindu religion. We saw 4 cremations taking place along with 2 being set up. All very interesting and very foreign to us Americans!

Today we walked to one of the most revered Buddhist sites. Many, many stairs to climb up the hill.

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