Living Goddesses and Animal Sacrifices and Everything Else I Love

For anyone who comes to Nepal ever, Bandipur is a required stop along your tourist route. Lonely Planet describes it as, "draped like a silk scarf along the high ridge above Dumre, the town is a living museum of Newari cuture." Indeed, it was beautiful and picturesque and peaceful. I only spent one day and one night here along the way from Pokhara to Kathmandu, but I could have spent several more days drinking tea in the cobblestone town square, going on solo walks around the valley to moss-covered stone temples, and playing with kids in the hills. The town used to be on an old trade route between Tibet and India, and there are still abandoned shop houses in place along small alleys in town. Not many tourists stop here, so there was only one budget guest house to stay in, and miraculously, there was not a single store selling the usual tourist knick-knacks and pashmina scarves.

In the afternoon in Bandipur, the clouds parted and I was able to see the snowy peaks of numerous mountains beyond the valley over which the town is perched. In the evening I walked to Tin Dhara ("Three Spouts") where spring water pours out of five (not three) beautifully carved stone spouts from the surrounding forest. Two young girls were washing clothes and their long black hair in the running water.

Check out this picture, which I took in Bandipur. Among the traditional textiles and corn husks hanging out to dry is an American flag beach towel with a woman's thonged bare bottom. Lovely touch.

Kali, the Goddess of Destruction

I have recently concluded that Kali is my favorite Hindu goddess. Call me a silly, idealizing American, but I love the darkness. Kali is an incarnation of the goddess Parvati, and she is often referred to as the Black Goddess or the Goddess of Destruction. "Kali" in Hindi means "black one." In paintings and statues she is pictured as a black-skinned woman with a garland of bloody skulls around her neck and a bloody knife in her hand. She is always standing on a corpse, which represents ignorance.

My first day in Kathmandu I took a local bus an hour outside of the city to a Kali temple. Since it was Saturday, many Hindu families also made the journey to worship Kali and make offerings. There were long lines of Hindus winding down several staircases to the small temple by the stream in the low forest. As a tourist, and since I am not allowed to enter the temple as a non-Hindu, I was able to skip over the long lines and go straight to the temple grounds below. Perched from some balconies around the temple, I could watch the pilgrims go inside with offerings of flower petals and coconuts. Many people also brought chickens and goats to be sacrificed inside, as bloodthirsty Kali requires the blood of uncastrated male animals to be poured over her image every week.

The sacrificing itself was very matter-of-fact. There was no ceremonious delay or chanting; a young man with a sharf butcher's knife sliced off the head and tossed the pieces back to its owner. Sometimes the owner would then clang the goat's head against a brass bell in the temple, and then the carcass would be carried over to the butchering station where men boiled off the fur and handed back the chopped pieces in a plastic bag.

Mostly I like Kali because I am fascinated by Hindus' worship of her. For a good hour I stood and watched lines of families pour into her bloody temple, and I couldn't help but wonder what they were thinking as they approached her terrible image and clanged her bell to announce their presence. For me it's difficult to conceive of God as bloodthirsty and frightening, but it's useful for me to try, which is why I like to think about Kali.

Family Ties Across the World

My second day in Kathmandu, a Nepali family friend named Nima picked me up at my hotel and took me to some Buddhist stupas and gompas around the Kathmandu Valley. It was very kind and helpful, because I would not have been able to figure out the buses around the valley on my own!

Sometimes my family ties in places as far away as Nepal amaze me. This is how I (now) know Nima:
Geshe Gelek is my aunt Valle's Buddhist teacher at her Tibetan Buddhist center in North Carolina, and now he is a good family friend of the entire Jones extended family. Geshe Gelek's sister is Sonam, who lives in New York and is also the nanny for my little cousin Dora. Sonam's husband is Pasang, and Pasang's brother is Nima who lives in Kathmandu. Even though I have never met Sonam or Pasang, they arranged for Nima to meet me in Kathmandu yesterday, and now I am invited to dinner at their home on my last night in Nepal. Fabulous!


What does a living goddess look like?

She is dressed in a fancy red and gold Nepali dress and wears a lot of makeup, and she is very beautiful. Today I saw her. Nepalis call her the Kumari Devi, and she is eleven years old. She resides in the Kumari Bahal temple in the old city of Kathmandu, and as I was standing in her courtyard she poked her head out of her window upstairs to give the hungry tourists a glimpse.


Nepal actually has several living goddesses, but this Kumari is the most important. I learn these things from Lonely Planet Nepal. She is only the Kumari Devi until she reaches puberty; after her first period she becomes mortal again and a new Kumari Devi is identified as the deity's reincarnation. The Kumari must always come from a Newari caste of silver- and goldsmiths. She must pass a series of tests - one of which involves being trapped inside a dark room with scary noises and masked men and 108 buffalo heads on display. The true Kumari will not be scared. She also has to have certain physical characteristics, the appropriate horoscope, and she must select certain objects that belonged to her predecessor. Several times a year she comes out of her temple in a festival procession through the old city.



I'm ashamed to admit that I have become a full-blown tourist. It's embarrassing to be constantly snapping photos, and though I'd still like to pretend I'm "different" from them all, I'm not. To prove it, here is a horrible photo of me posing with a fake Hindu priest, for which I paid him 10 of his requested 200 rupees.