Picture of Lifting of corpse covered in orange cloth and flowers to be carried to the cremation platform (Kathmandu, Nepal)

Corpse covered in orange cloth and flowers being lifted to the cremation platform

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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.
On the other side of the two bridges spanning the Bagmati river, there are more platforms, for cremation of royalty and those high on the societal ladder. A crowd had gathered around a corpse covered in an orange cloth. Relatives were tossing white and yellow flowes on the cloth, and one woman had to be contained because she was desperate. It was the only display of sorrow and emotions I saw in the few hours I watched the scenes on the banks of the holy river Bagmati. The corpse was lifted, and carried to one of the platforms on the south side of the bridges. It was only when they had left, that I noticed something else, left behind on the stairs. It took some time to sink in: I was looking at a corpse, almost uncovered, lying feet-down on the stairs of the river. I was deeply impressed. When I returned to the south side of the bridges, I noticed that the fire that I had seen started, had almost disappeared. Someone was trying to wake up a fire that had almost extinguished. It was only when I studied my pictures at home that I realized that there were arms and a foot sticking out of the dying fire. Most of the spectators were gone, and someone just pushed the ashes from the platform into the muddy shallow holy water of the Bagmati.
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