I went to Nepal on the most wonderful, memorable trip of my life, and all the beaches and bank accounts and private jets in the world couldn't replace it from the no.1 spot.
Sure glad I got the window seat this time
Today I was feeling reminiscent about the time I spent alone there, the last week, in particular, the Pashupatinath temple, which has since been damaged by the earthquakes that happened there, but not devastated like the long list of places across the country. Some places I visited were destroyed, but I'd like to talk about those another time.
Pashupatinath is a Hindu temple famous for its population of monkeys - A monkey temple. It's a wonderful example of animals of nature living harmoniously alongside humans - a common theme around India and Nepal.
The monkeys were calm, well fed and played nice with the dogs and tourists, which is not what you hear about many other monkey tourist spots around the world, where the monkeys are trained to be bag thieves. On the contrary, it was like watching local families, kids included, chilling out in the sun.
Watching the world go by
But the monkeys were not the purpose of the temple. Now, I don't want to pretend I know or understand the spiritual and religious practices going on, but this temple was set out in a way designed to cremate the dead.
Rather then putting them in a coffin, they would wrap their deceased up (possibly with meaningful things inside), put them on a float, set them alight and send them down the river that ran through the temple.
There were multiple platforms running down the river here. Coming here, you have to accept that you're essentially going to be breathing in dead human, which is a little odd, to say the least.
The whole time there was dignified and peaceful, despite big chunky American/Russian tourists with name tags speckled around the place, and I'm so relieved the monkey's home managed to survive the tragedy that the country was struck with.
If you haven't been to Nepal before, go there, do the Annapurna Circuit Trek, before it's too late. Landscape is changing rapidly, roads are being built across one of the most pristine and clean places on earth. Put a month aside for it and you'll be smiling about it on your deathbed, guaranteed. I will post another story about Nepal at a later date.