Picture of People and corpse on the stairs of a ghat at Pashupatinath (Kathmandu, Nepal)

People and partly uncovered corpse on ghat at Pashupatinath

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Watching the open-air cremations at Pashupatinath may make you very silent, and might make you reconsider life and death. You will not walk away untouched.
I sat down with the Nepalese opposite the cremation site, and watched. For me, the foreigner of a continent where death has virtually disappeared from public life, where seeing a funeral car is the closest you can come to be faced with death in daily life, the openness and accessibility of this cremation site has a tremendous impact. Families with young children were watching with me while a corpse, wrapped in a white cloth, was carried to one of the platforms. A few relatives were bidding their last farewells to the corpse, some flowers were tossed on the corpse, after which it was lifted and carried on the pile of wooden blocks that had been constructed just before. I watched yet another cremation. One of the people working at Pashupatinath was making a pile of wooden blocks, making sure it was the right length and had a more or less straight surface. A coffin, that had been waiting next to a platform, was surrounded by people, and a man opened the lid. He threw clothes and shoes in the holy river Bagmati, which actually is no more than a trickel nowadays thanks to overpopulation. After the coffin was broken apart, its remains were also deposited in the Bagmati. The corpse was covered in flowers, lifted and put on top of the pyre. After relatives walked around it to show their last respect, it was covered by straw and the fire was lit. This was surprisingly little ceremony surrounding the event, and when smoke started billowing out of the pile of wood, straw and human remains, the relatives disappeared.
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