Indra Jatra & That Crazy Westerner…

Pictures from Indra Jatra

Today (actually yesterday given the internet delay…) at the Indra Jatra festival I made quite a name for myself. How? By passing out smack in the middle of the excitement and becoming the focus of the Nepali Red Cross (who, by the way, did a wonderful job). Fainting can certainly cause excitement wherever it happens, but when a white person faints in the middle of hundreds of thousands of people in Durbar square – things get really exciting. Fortunately, despite the excitement, I’m doing just fine. It turns out to have been a perfect storm of dehydration, a stomach virus, a fever spiking, heat, pollution, etc. I’m sure the whole spectacle was extremely comical to an outsider. I woke up surrounded by Nepali Red Cross employees in vests and yellow hard hats, with a group of Japanese tourists and several press people constantly snapping pictures.

About the actual festival, it is a festival worshipping the god Indra who is the god of thunder and rain. The festival is to thank him for the rains during the raining season and let him know that it is now the end of the monsoon and the rains need to stop. Another portion of the festival, probably the part that makes it so famous, is when the Living Goddess comes and blesses the ruler, giving him a blessing for the new year. Traditionally, the Kumari (Living Goddess) had blessed the king, but with the kind in exile this year, the president of Nepal was blessed. There are many Kumaris throughout Nepal, but the most important one lives on the edge of Durbar Square where the ceremony takes place. The Kumari is typically a young girl, who is the Living Goddess until she begins menstruation or loses blood in any other manner. For the Hindus, she is the bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju, a manifestation of Durga. Buddhists believe that she is the tantric goddess Varjadevi.

The Indra Jatra festival draws an enormous crowd to Durbar Square, where the steps leading to all of the temples were completely packed. One temple was blocked off for foreigners only. The festival is essentially a lot of “hurry-up-and-waiting”. We arrived at 2:40 and the festival was not over until around 6, although during that time, things were only happening in spurts of 10 or 15 minutes or sometimes even faster than that. The first interesting part of the festival was the arrival of the elephants (elaborate elephant costumes with several men underneath). The elephant is the vehicle of the god Indra, so they were essentially preparing the way. They danced for a long while in front of the old palace where the president and a number of diplomats watched. The next portion of the festival was when a man in an elaborate costume appeared and began dancing around the crowd. I was later told he represented a monkey of some sort, although I’m not certain how he tied into the festival. A three or four year old boy, also dressed in an elaborate costume teased the monkey. Finally, the most important part of the festival occurred when a chariot carrying a manifestation of Indra and a chariot with the Kumari came out. Unfortunately I was still being forced to sit after getting sick, so I missed this, but got a play by play from my friends who took pictures and showed them to me as it happened. Disclaimer: this description of the festival may be completely wrong – I’m basing it on the little I know about it, what I was told by other Westerners, and how I interpreted it. Anyone who knows more is more than welcome to correct me!

Overall it was a crazy day for sure! I’m hoping the rest of my stay won’t be nearly as exciting…at least not in the way today was.