Elephant

Never in my life, have I seen an elephant walking on a street..

He came to Kathmandu with his keeper to greet workers from Sidhartha bank that had its 11 years anniversary that day. They offered him some fruit and water, took their photos and few minutes later, he was back in the street.

The heavy traffic of Kathmandu was passing him by and he, without any kind of bother, kept slowly walking his way to a town called Boudha, about 7kilometers away.

As random as this whole scene seemed to the locals, I was completely blown away by the experience..

Puja - Worshiping The Gods

While stuck in a traffic, waiting for it to move, I looked at an old memorial on the side of the road and saw couple men sitting there, “playing” with water and leaves.

I entered through a small gate, asked permission and after I was welcome to join in I sat and observed. First I was concern if I’m not interrupting something very sacred, but to my surprise I learned that this highly spiritual ceremony of puja can have very informal, “business like” approach..

For the past 35 years, Laxman Khadka, popular local figure, does puja every year on his fathers’ dead anniversary. As he was egger to share, he also does puja for the 4 former kings of Nepal on the date of their dead anniversary.

Pujary - Bishnu Prasad Adhikari (man who is hired to perform the ceremony) and Laxman seemed to be a little bored by the whole process (I guess it gets tiring after 35 years of reputation). They held the puja in very informal manner and didn't hesitate to answer all sorts of questions I had.

As they kept saying prayers, reading and repeating the script, dropping water, mixing leaves, burning sticks and pray, the most bored seemed to be my translator, nepali photojournalist, who was truly amazed, how in the world can I be so enthusiastic about something so common and “every day like” as puja. I could read in his eyes: “You come all the way to Nepal, to photograph couple old men pouring water… really?”

Anup

Anup Poudel (20) is a local film student who recently became one of the winners of "2010 Democracy Video Challenge." Participants of this contests are asked to "Create a short video that completes the phrase “Democracy is.."

Anup came to the office today for an interview and I snapped few shots of this happy kid around our cafeteria.

More info about the contest:
http://www.videochallenge.america.gov/video.html

Monkey Temple

Placed in hills of Kathmandu Valley, surrounded by monkeys everywhere, Swoyambhunath, Buddhist temple is truly amazing place to be.. I was lucky enough to go in the sunset time, right before a rain storm, so the light was as good as it's going to get.

Not too many people left, just some kids playing soccer and dogs sleeping around the stupa. I met Tashi, one of the monks, I enjoyed his company for a while, took some of his portraits and shared some mango juice he gave me. It was very relaxing experience.

My first time up there, not the last.

Orchid Garden

As beautiful as Nepal is, there are parts to it that are very harsh. Several times already, I’ve seen things that were very challenging to look at and even more so, to photograph. This was one of those times.

It seems there are more of the sad stories in Nepal to be told then there is the happy ones. But I’m not sure.. It all depends on where you look and what you want to see.

Even though this place called Orchid Garden is overall very positive and does great things for many underprivileged children in Nepal, my very first impression of this place was as you can see below.

I walked around, I stared at their faces and they stared back, some of them cried and so did I..