Rato Macchindranath
Today was the first day of the festival of Rato Macchindranath. I saw the chariot pulling for the first time, and it was a great experience for me. I enjoyed seeing the people participation in such festivals. Young guys were excited to grab the rope and pull the chariot.
Bajrayogini
This year I was lucky enough to see the Bajrayogini’s Jatra (festival) at Sankhu, Kathmandu. This is one of the major Jatra that we can see inside Kathmandu valley. I did not see much crowd as we see in jatra of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur or Lalitpur. May be since Sankhu is a small village/city east north of Kathmandu and the population is very less. Many people are not aware of this jatra, there were very less visitors to observe this jatra.
Holi, is the festival of colors. It is a Hindu festival and people in Nepal also celebrate this festival with friends and relatives and people of other communities. Here is a collection of photographs of the Holi festival at Thamel, Kathmandu. The photographs were taken during Holi celebrations by tourist and local people at Thamel.
Hope you enjoy these photographs.
Happy Holi.
Samyak Guthi organizes the Samyak Mahadan Festival in every 5 years. This year I was lucky enough to see this festival. Being a newar and from Kopundole, I did not knew about this festival which is conducted at a distance of 10 min walk from my house. There are still lots of people who have no idea about such Festivals.
Newar Community is rich from every aspect
This is a Buddhist ceremony called Illhane Samyak conducted at Nagbahal, Patan. We can see more then hundred Buddhist’s sculpture there. Tanbahal bashundahra Devi, Jattadhari Lokeshwore, Deepankar, Aarya Tara, Dharma Kirti are few to be named.
It is believed that from B.S 1761 it started and used to be conducted every year, due to lack of fund for guthi, now a day in every 5 years it is conducted.
My purpose of posting about this samyak is to let people know about many such Festival that are conducted in Nepal by different community at different places which are unknown to other community or people from other part of Nepal. I bet, even many Newar or Buddhist from Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, Pokhara, Palpa don’t know about this.
Today is Shivaratri, and for the first time in my life I went to Pashupatinath on this particular day with my friend Avhishek. For me it was a new experience seeing all baba’s taking puff of ganja (Marijuana).
Some incident that happen there forced me to post some of the picture.
I saw the naked baba, he was exposing his genitals, and police request this baba to no to show his genitals. Later I came to know he is a bilateral amputee.
Before this, Avishek was taking some close up picture of one baba. When this baba noticed Avishek, he shouted “CAMERA KHICCH LO” (get the camera) and ran after him. Avishek shouted back “I have not taken your picture” and left that place.
Kumari Ghar
The people of Kathmandu valley celebrated the 250th Indra Jatra this year. Indra Jatra is one of the important Jatra (festival) celebrated in Kathmandu Valley. However, like most festivals of Nepal, both Hindus and Buddhist unite to celebrate the festival of Indra Jatra. The living Goddess Kumari is taken out in a procession in a chariot. King of Nepal pay a visit to Kumari on the first and last day of this festival. This festival is celebrated for 1 week, couple of weeks before the biggest hindu festival Dashain.
Yesterday, during Kumari Jatra or Indra Jatra, we witnessed our new monarch Sri 8 Maharajadhiraj Girija Babu. I never saw any of our prime ministers been escorted that way with so many convoy ahead and behind his vehicle. Traffic was halted and on top of that it was raining many people faced traffic jams. I too was stuck in that very traffic jam and every one was not happy with that act of our Prime Minister.
We still have King in our nation, he is not yet striped from his post, and the current parliament even can not do so as they have mention in new constitution that they will decide the future role of the king after CA polls.
I support Local Empowerment. So, I’m sharing this Everest Base Camp Trek to promote a new way of trekking where trekkers can empower the local service providers like lodges, guides and porters by booking services directly through them. #empoweringthehimalayas #freetriptoeverest
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