Travel Day 1000 – Kathmandu, NEPAL
It was Monday morning and as the Nepali girls recommended, this was the best time of the week to visit the UNESCO enlisted Pashupatinath Temple…
Pashupatinath Temple + Burning Ghat
I had set my mind on walking all the way from Thamel and when I finally came down the last little hill, I arrived at a fenced-in, preserved little area that made up the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Pashupatinath. Knowing that as a non-Hindu I couldn’t enter the temple itself, I walked as far as I could towards a check post that requested a steep 1000 rupees entrance, instead of the 250 rupees as listed in the book. Since I couldn’t enter the temple anyway, I didn’t care about the fee and continued my walk to the lovely Panch Deval Temple…
This nicely preserved courtyard temple consisting of five individual temples on a raised platform, had been decommissioned and was nowadays re-used as the first retirement home for elderly people. The use of the temple was interesting and the fact that the courtyard was sheltered from the business around the main temple outside, gave the place a certain calm. This was even underlined by the slow-moving elderly people who seemed to have all the time in the world and they too made me slow down and sit for an hour, saying hello to everyone and watching the daily business…
Babas at Pashupatinath, Nepal
When I then tried to walk closer to the ghats of Pashupatinath, I was stopped by the police, telling me that I had to pay the 1000 rupee entrance fee. Considering that this was almost the cost of 4 nights in my hotel and considering that I was not even allowed inside the temple, I walked off and tried to approach the ghats from a little side street. But here again the police came running after me, telling me to pay the 1000 rupees entrance fee…
After I started a lengthy discussion about this completely overpriced entrance fee, the police referred me to a guide who spoke better English, to help clarify the circumstances. As it turned out, the guide was actually sympathetic with my case and he offered his help. Being a guide, he knew a way to enter the ghats from an area that was not controlled by the police and for half the entry price he was willing to share his secret with me. That seemed a bit dodgy to me, but since he insisted that I only had to pay him after he got me inside, we had a deal…
Panch Deval, Retirement Home Temple
There I was on my backpacker budget, sneaking into a UNESCO site that had quadrupled the price since my book was published and the only result seemed to be that Pashupatinath appeared as nothing but one big tourist attraction. There were mainly big tourist groups inside, obviously not caring about the price of the entrance and rather assuming the right to take close up photos with zoom lenses of the ceremonial fire burial of what seemed to have been an elderly man…
This was all not to my liking and after I even got snapped at by an American tourist who told me not to dare to stand too close to him because he had waited already for two hours for the best shot of the corpse, I rather took off and enjoyed the much more tranquil atmosphere at the temples on top of the hill. Yeah, Pashupatinath was definitely and interesting place, but having seen the ghats Varanasi, this place just didn’t feel as authentic and I was only happy that I didn’t pay the ridiculously high entrance price to find that out… : )
Find all Pashupatinath Temple Photos here.
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