around the world in 180 days

We’ve been in Kathmandu for a total of 6 days now, between the first time we were here and the last few days, and before today, we hadn’t seen any of the cultural sites here. It’s almost shameful, until I remember that we’re americans and the only culture in the world that matters is ours. We’ve been drinking plenty of coca-cola, so we’re cool on that front.

We decided we’d better visit Pashupatinath anyway, as it is one of the holiest sites in all of Hinduism. It is a temple complex dedicated to Shiva, the creator and destroyer god, and it is also the place where Hindus cremate their dead. It is in active use and in the hour and a half we toured the complex, four bodies were either reduced to ashes or set aflame. It was both profoundly moving and disturbing at the same time; the emotions that the sight of a charred and smoldering human arm stir up are complicated and difficult to describe.

Death in India and Nepal is something that is confronted, not something that is prettied up by a mortician and displayed in false grandeur. The family members of the deceased wash the body in the holy river and cleanse him or her of all sin. For a man, his eldest son takes a torch in his hand (for a woman, it is her youngest son–if a person has no sons, it is their spouse or other close relative), walks around the funeral pyre three times, and places the flaming brand, which is made of red sandalwood, in the deceased’s mouth, setting the body and the wood beneath alight. It takes about 2-3 hours to completely burn a body, with women taking longer than men. Once the body is burned, the torch bearer shaves his hair, eyebrows and beard and dresses in white for 13 days, a period of mourning for their loved one. A woman whose husband has died will never remarry, their bangles and jewelry burn with their spouse and they are not allowed to wear red ever again.

Much of the rest of the temple complex is dedicated to fertility. There is a long series of temples all containing representations of divine genitalia, that of Shiva and his wife, whose name I can’t remember. Couples who cannot conceive travel here from all over the country and smear a combination of milk, honey, butter, sugar and something else on the statues and then drink it, believing it will make them fertile. Infertility can be a big problem for a couple in a rural area: people begin to talk after a couple of childless years of marriage, and they don’t say nice things.

All in all, it was a great experience, if somewhat disturbing. Glad we finally made it out of Thamel and into the real Kathmandu.

My brother Matthew has been asking us to buy him a sitar while we are on the Indian Subcontinent for as long as he’s known we’d be traveling here. We told him that we’d look, but that it was unlikely.

But we looked. We looked in Delhi two separate times, both times when the temperature was over 45 celsius (110 F). I’m not a hot weather person and Lord knows that Anna’s not, but I don’t know how anyone is supposed to function in Delhi when it is that hot. As you walk down the street, you’re choked by the smell of human filth, automotive exhaust and incense, as if that might make a difference. To make our search more difficult, both times we were sick.

We went into a music shop one of the times and were attacked by a salesperson. I think we were the first potential customers they’d seen since December, when Delhi is actually tolerable. We told him we were looking for a sitar and he kindly showed us an instrument that Ravi Shankar might have been honored to play, with a price tag to match. See, we were in the wrong part of Delhi. Connaught Place is centerally located, with lots of shopping and hotels, but for bargains you need to go elsewhere. We tried to leave and the salesman blocked the door. Indian salesmen are either the best in the world or the worst, depending on your point of view.

So we decided to look in Kathmandu. Our first time here, we had more than enough to do getting ready for our trek and we only went into one shop. We got serious about finding one yesterday, visiting 3 shops and settling on a particular sitar in a particular shop. After a few calls home, we secured the funding and got the green light to go ahead with the purchase.

It took about an hour to get all the extra strings wrapped up at the music shop–it came with a complete set, which for a sitar means 18 strings. Next we had to ship it.

The sitar came in a hard case, which will be nice for Matthew (who is about the luckiest 17 year old in the whole wide world) once the sitar is back in the states, but which meant big bucks for shipping. All told, the shipping was more than the instrument itself. We sent it via Aramax, an internationally known shipping company I’d never heard of before. We watched the workers pack the awkwardly-shaped instrument for shipping for almost 2 hours. They wrapped everything in bubble wrap, wrapped the bubble wrap in cardboard and wrapped the cardboard in plastic, upon which they slapped “fragile” stickers and wrote the tracking number about 10 times. It was quite an operation. Anna went out to get snacks for everyone.

It is done now. Matthew gets a sitar, partially as a birthday gift from my parents and partially by his own funding and we spent all day getting it for him. I’m jealous. The instrument is an undecorated model, but it is still an absolutely breathtaking piece of craftsmanship. It is worth far more than we paid, even with the shipping. Matthew, you are not allowed to sell that instrument to anyone but me. Ever. No matter what.

Again, not much to update about. We've been in Kathmandu since Tuesday, when we took one of those always-fun 3rd world bus trips. We were on a tourist bus this time, which made things more comfortable. There was no livestock ... [Continue reading this entry]

Anna and I were both very much ready to leave India. As I may have mentioned, we were sick most of our time there, the shopkeepers and merchants were pushy and rude, there were many touts and many people who ... [Continue reading this entry]