lions and angels

Nepal is a curious mix of Hindu and Buddhist culture, they are often mixed up together in the iconography and devotions.  Here, a Buddhist sculpture gets the full color treatment with pigment and flower petals, and sometimes food offerings, which is a very common for Hindu worshippers. Now it is the festival  Dashain, which a very nice shop keeper explained to me:  First is the day of the crow (the messenger), then the day of the dog (kindly friendly creature), then the day of the goddess of money, Lakshmi, then another special god, then the day of brothers and sisters to get together etc.

 Lions and angels watching over us. A young artist I met was worried that there is not a place for God to have a home in our society...which he depicts by showing the detached part of the Buddhist temple...God has no home he said. Another artist I met runs an art school for kids after school, she also did the big charcoal drawings of peppers.  There are 130 languages spoken in Nepal.

At KU,  Kathmandu University, everyone greets each other with the hands together, and namaste, then they shake your hand, then they hold your hand.  Same thing in the little stores here.  the street vendors seem to think selling is more of a joking game. Or maybe this is all my imagination. But I feel like when I buy something in one of the small shops, I have made a friend for life.  Like the ginger honey tea, for example...which symbolizes Kathmandu, a quiet peaceful cup of tea, served carefully and politely, while outside is the chaos of unpaved streets, construction, almost being run over every minute, lots of honking, wild mix of smells, dogs, children in school uniforms, lots of motorbikes all running on very narrow streets.