A Temple to Foreign Gods (dispatches from the trek, pt 3)

Do not trust the gods of the air of Kathmandu.

The thought flashes through my head as our taxi speeds toward Pashupati temple. Jeremy sits beside me, and we watch the city slide by in lurid color, its shacks bearing the stamps of Coca-Cola and Pepsi on bold, hand-painted plywood signs.

Street kids run through alleys bearing paper bags, which they place over their mouths and breathe deeply when their play slows. Western wear and saris dance and weave across sidewalks, shoes and sandals stir the dust of the streets, and we climb the last hill before the temple.

As we hop out of the cab, I see skeletal cows, rooting through piles of garbage like stray dogs.

Don't trust the hamburgers either, I think.

My friend Jeremy, clad in jeans and a soccer jersey, leads the way to the temple complex. He has lived in Kathmandu for a short time, and arranged this trip for me. Since we have one day in the city before beginning our trek to Mount Everest, he wants me to see this temple and get an idea of what kind of power rules this city.

"The kingdom is in us," I say as we approach the guard shack, where westerners are required to purchase tickets before entering. The statement is meant to identify conviction, but it's really a question, the central question of my journey from the outskirts of Atlanta to the base of the world's tallest mountain. I want to know if this kingdom that defines my life to is a real power. I need to know that it moves through cultures and across oceans, and into the temples of foreign gods.

Two weeks before leaving Atlanta, I visited a Hindu temple to open a conversation. After describing the various statues and telling me their stories, emphasizing the commonalities between his faith and mine, the priest took my hand, held it, and pointed to a string of Christmas lights that lined the ceiling tiles. "Many lights, one electric," he told me. I looked at the lights. "Many lights, one power," he said. I held his hand for a moment, watched a wealthy Indian couple approach the gods, then quietly left the room.

Now we walk past boxes filled with powdered dyes, oranges and yellows and reds, for some ceremonial purpose I don't understand. We mill past stalls, past shadus, the holy men with long beards, robes, round bellies, and painted faces. Jeremy tells me not to take photos of them lest they pursue us for money.

Ahead, I see a group of tourists standing on the concrete riverbank, cameras in hand, snapping photos. I turn to see their subject, and on the other side of the river are small gazebos with rectangular fires crackling and scorching. Near to the fires rest human forms, under fabric shrouds. In clusters standing by walls beyond the pyres stand Nepalis, milling around, chatting, watching the flames. Their dead are burning before us, and their possessions, now poisoned by mortality, are hurled into the grimy river below.

I gape at the shrouded bodies, feeling a tension over the ceremony before us. I come from a land where death is hidden from society's eyes, tucked away in nursing homes, and sanitized in funerals. Here it is, final, grotesque, and public.

A body goes onto the lumber. Men in tank tops uncover a face, light the head on fire, and the next funeral begins.

We mill on through the complex, where we see dozens of shrines, each with a phallic sculpture at its center. Explicit carvings outside the shrines depict horrific gods presiding over complex orgies. Nepalis mill around us, some seeking profit from the tourists, some seeking favor from the spirits, some to give themselves to worship of the gods.

Several buildings say, "Hindus only" on the outside, barring westerners from seeing inside. I ask Jeremy what goes on behind these walls. He shrugs and tells me we're in a fertility temple, so one can imagine, but he hasn't been inside.

We find a long set of stairs climbing up to a hill overlooking the city, and begin to walk. Here, moving away from the vivid altars to mortality and sexuality, I try to process what I am seeing. I am an alien here, so I am bound to feel confused by the native forms of worship, but there is a seething force in the air which troubles me.

This is my first day in Nepal, so I pass the sights quietly, waiting to understand, hoping that in the mess and mystery of this journey, as it runs through this complex, the city of Kathmandu, and the great mountains beyond, the kingdom of Christ will take on skin and offer hope. For the moment, it remains hidden in my heart, a small alien light in a noisy temple to local gods.