Calm in the Chaos

I really enjoy spending more than a few days in a place. It is a luxury when traveling to be able to unpack, not feel rushed to see the check list of sights and you have the pleasure of finding places that are like an oasis that you can return to. I have my favourite coffee place (best coffee since Melbourne), I am able to walk to my work each day, confident I won’t get lost and I know the names of the guys at my hotel. All things that create maybe some routine and sense of stability in what is often an insecure and unknown existence when you are living out of your backpack with no return ticket home. I enjoy getting to know somewhere, of walking the back streets, buying some groceries and becoming part of a place even if it is for a limited window of time.

Random religion mixed in with day to day life

Kathmandu is an incredibly diverse city that is a mixture of culture and religion, old and new and weird and wonderful. The streets of Thamel where I am staying are the main touristy areas – the scent of incense filling your nose and the sounds of “om mani padme hum” are constants in the thick of the countless shops selling crafts, trekking gear and souvenirs. But get out of this area and the old streets and laneways take you back to what life was perhaps like before Nepal became the new hippy hang out. A maze of narrow streets filled with local everyday life. What is perhaps the most fascinating, is the collection of religious monuments that dot the laneways and appear in a seemingly suburban road. In the middle of the strip shops, it is not unusual to come across a monument to Ganesh or a Shiva temple, all significant icons in the Hindu religion. Add in a Buddhist Stupa and you have what Kathmandu is really about, a collection or collaboration of meeting points.

Buddhist Stupa - Bodnath

In one day I meandered around one of the largest Buddhist Stupa's in the world in the Tibetan area of town before wandering down to the most significant Hindu temple, where I witnessed the ceremony of burial. Profound, touching and quite emotional, the burial ceremony is conducted on the banks of the river where the grieving family come to pay their final respects and the body is cremated and committed back to the earth via the river. All in the plain view of onlookers and bystanders and like me, curious tourists. I felt slightly voyeuristic as the smoke from the carefully built fire filled the air, mindful that as I inhaled, it was once a human life that was mixed in with the oxygen I was using to give me life – one ends and another continues. Another body arrives and the process continues, carefully it is carried to the fresh pile of wood and in the process, the white sheet slips away to revel a woman. A serene face, her arm draped over the soft white cloth, she is covered but yet exposed for the world to see, and I realise, I perhaps have not seen a dead body before. But somehow, it is just that a body, the spirit is long gone and that is merely what remains. It must be how the loved one that ignites the fire must feel as well, as there is no other way I can fathom how you can set fire to someone dear to you.

Everyday life on the streets of Kathmandu, and yes that is a goat

So for all the craziness that is Kathmandu, the traffic and constant of horns, the power outages that are scheduled up to 16 hours per day and the blend of religions and people, there is a certain peace and tranquility in the place. Whether it is walking the kora at the Buddhist Stupa, witnessing a burial ceremony at the Hindu temple or even spending an afternoon at the sumptuous Garden of Dreams, there are moments of stillness, of silence and space. There is the ability to escape the mayhem and to find a place to just be. So this last few days I have been practicing just that, just being, in a place that is usually chaotic, and I am finding the little pockets of solitude and savouring them.

My roof top terrace, come yoga studio, another haven for me