Brett and Kiersten's Travels: More Adventures in Kathmandu - Monkey Temple, Dasain Festival, and more

So the last couple days have been awesome. We've finally gotten over the jet lag and are really starting to get used to life in Kathmandu. Yesterday we visited the Buddhist temple of Swayambhunath (aka the monkey temple), located way up on the top of a hill about 2km east of where we're staying in Thamel. We ended up cabbing it to temple because we thought we might get lost if we tried to walk and at that point we had no idea how far away it was (the roads aren't quite as organized as their are in Canada). The cab ride itself was pretty wild. There were a few times during the short journey that I thought we would definitely slaughter a motorcyclist or two. After arriving at the base of the hill, we approached the temple by climbing a long steep staircase surrounded by a monkey infested forest. The little bastards were everywhere! flying around from shrine to tree to handrail trying to steal any food the unsuspecting tourists had foolishly brought with them. At one point, one of the little fellas ran past me with a whole bag of crackers in his hand and jumped up to the relative safety of a giant statue of Buddha before tearing into them. The temple itself was quite a sight to behold. It centered around a white dome with tall golden tower on top with large painted buddha eyes staring down at Kathmandu. The rest of the day was spent wandering, eating, and drinking. Basically just living life.

Today was animal sacrifice day for the Dasain festival, which is apparently the most important day of the whole thing. Most of the shops and restaurants were closed for the event and just about everybody headed down to Durbar square for the festivities. One of the more interesting aspects of the festival is that people use part of the day to worship the machinery that helps them get through their daily lives. As we walked the streets it seemed that you couldn't go more than ten feet before seeing someone putting bananas, gifts, rice, goat heads, paint, and other trinkets on their motorcycles or the engines of their cars. A lot of people seemed to be walking around with live chickens and ducks in their hands as well. We went for quite a long walk out of Thamel and into the older part of Kathmandu before returning to Durbar square to see if we could catch an animal sacrifice or two. It turns out that they do 90% of the sacrifices within a gated temple that tourists aren't allowed into. Kiersten and I got in line for the temple but were promptly told that it was locals only. So instead we just chilled in Durbar square for a bit trying to decide what to do when we randomly ended up getting in a conversation with a local from a small village in Langtang. He was living in Kathmandu studying business management and was very friendly and seemed genuinely interested in Canada. We talked to him for quite a while until he had to go back to work at a restaurant down the street. Just as we were about to leave we noticed three goats and water buffalo about to be sacrificed across the street from where we were standing. Perfect timing! We observed the sacrifices and it was intense to say the least! I took a video and some pictures that you can see below. It was definitely something that you don't see everyday. Anyways, after that we had lunch at our favourite little Yak restaurant and did nothing else really noteworthy. Enjoy the pics.

Oh yeah, Kiersten got poked by some little kid when we were way out of the tourist area. Im pretty sure he just wanted to touch a blond white girl for the first time. Hard to blame him.

Tomorrow we go mountain biking in the jungle outside the Kathmandu valley with the Nepali national xc mountain bike champion... no big deal.