Picture of Keeping the fire alive: cremating corpse at Pashupatinath (Kathmandu, Nepal)

Taking care of the fire of a burning corpse 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.
After getting off the taxi, I walked into a park belonging to the Pashupatinath area. Some teenagers were playing cricket, older people were sitting down for a chat, and a monkey rushed past as I walked on. I turned a corner and saw some souvenir stalls, and paid my entrance fee. Just around the corner, I entered a platform and saw a line of people hanging over the edge, smoke rising behind them, coming from below. When I joined them to look down, I saw fires burning below, and realized that this was the famed cremation site of Kathmandu. I walked down, crossed the small river and joined another line of people sitting on the stairs. It was hard to imagine that this narrow stream of water was actually the holy Bagmati river, on a par with the Ganges in India. However, the atmosphere was different: it felt relaxed, it seemed that locals around me came her for a day out, almost like going to a picnic.
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