I was sharing a small house in the center of Kathmandu with Prem and Hari, young Nepalis who worked with me in the office of a development NGO. The walls of their room were covered with posters of the dream-girls of the Bombay film industry, lying in the surf in wet saris with dedications of love scribbled above their autographs. My room was bare except for a plank bed under the window. We shared a small kitchen with only a shelf for our three bowls and plates and a bucket of water for washing dishes and laundry, which we drained into a hole in the ground.

My first weekend there I went do some sightseeing. About five miles from the center of Kathmandu stands the Bodhnath shrine where the eyes of the everlasting Buddha cast their penetrating, omniscient gaze across the surrounding landscape. 

A sign between the painted eyes represents the all-seeing third eye. There are no lips or mouth, as Buddha has no need to speak, but sees and knows all. The stupa is peaked with an ornate golden crown. Thirteen steps leading to the shrine represent the thirteen stages to knowledge or Bodhi. The area surrounding the stupa is a settlement of Tibetan refugees where small shops sell prayer wheels, tankas, rugs and other Tibetan objects smuggled out of their country. 

I followed the sign for a Tibetan herbalist I wanted to visit for some back pain I was having. Removing my shoes, I climbed the narrow stairs to his shop. The old monk, sitting behind a desk, surrounded by shelves cluttered with jars of herbs, acknowledged my presence with his eyes and motioned me to sit down. I told him what was bothering me.

His movements were so gentle, so subtle that I barely noticed when he felt my pulse. Breathing slowly, he reached behind for a glass jar, opened it, counted out ten brown pills and slipped them into a paper bag.    

The next day I took a taxi to Pashupati, the Hindu place of pilgrimage, dedicated to Lord Shiva, built on the Bagmati, a tributary of the sacred Ganges River. A festival was in progress on the outskirts when I arrived.  A firewalker stood hypnotized at the edge of a pit of burning coals where a crowd had gathered. His matted curls soaked in sweat, a penetrating fear seemed to lie deep beneath the fog of his stare as he walked through the scorching pit. His back and shoulders were penetrated by long spikes, which supported a small altar decorated with pictures of Hindu gods, flowers, streamers and offerings.

I continued down some steps and sat on a wall overlooking the holy river. Women crouched along its edge washing pots and pans, rinsing their laundry or bathing their children. At intervals along the banks, a cremation ghat, a large stone extension of the platform, jutted out into the river. On the farthest ghat, a shrouded body awaited cremation and the one beside it was in flames. On the nearest ghat, a body had already been reduced to ash and was being swept into the river. Women in rags sifted through debris settled in the water, searching for rings or golden teeth fillings that hadn’t burned with the bodies.

Watching, were the haunting eyes of sadhu holy men. They sat silently around the dying embers of their cooking fire, their hair covered in ash, their faces painted with red and yellow pigment.

I walked to the distant ghat where the corpse of a young woman with long dark hair lay wrapped in a muslin shroud. Her family stood solemnly around the pyre – her mother crying, the men silent – mourning her death. A monk blessed her body with sprinkles of water. The fire was lit. At first it burned slowly, as smoke vaporized into the air.

On the cremation pyre, slender flames licked the shroud, painting black streaks across the folds until it left her body briefly naked and ignited the straw and twigs beneath the corpse. The straw and twigs combusted into a powerful fire. An inferno, crackling and spewing, exploded wooden fragments into the air and consumed her body in its fury.