charbroiled remains
Burnt remains dot the Bagmati River. As I watch the flames rise slowly, I contemplate the fact that I’m in Kathmandu.
The flight in was the kind of bizarre that makes you reflect on every bad decision you’ve ever made. You might as well book a seat in the bathroom and brace your soul because you're going to be shitting yourself. The plane doesn’t land so much as it dives, rattling across peaks and valleys like a drunk mosquito. It makes you think about God. Then you see the Himalayas and forget for a minute that you’re in a steel tube defying gravity. They're that beautiful. Just enough to distract you from the chaos.
Getting through customs in Nepal? Surprisingly painless. Nepal greets you gently.
In town, I meet a Mongolian girl, a French guy, and two New Yorkers. Solo travelers like me. I get close with all of them by the time my trip in Nepal is over. The French guy tells me I’ve got a place to stay whenever I make it to Paris.
That night, we find ourselves tucked into a hole-in-the-wall Nepali joint. The kind of place with no signage, plastic chairs, and food that could either save your life or end it. The owner drags me into the kitchen and shows me how to make Rildok — a spicy potato soup mashed by hand with a wooden club. He lets me hold the club and beat the potatoes senseless.
We end our night by drinking Tongba, a warm millet-based liquor that tastes like sweet sake and kicks like a mule. You sip it slow until it hijacks your bloodstream.
We eat. We drink. We laugh. Everyone’s from somewhere else and no one cares. It’s a strange kind of comfort — being about as far from home as you can be, and still ending up across the table from two New Yorkers. The world collapses like that sometimes.
Earlier in the day, I spend time alone at Pashupatinath Temple and watched the Aarti ceremony. It's a fire ritual, meant to honor the gods and the dead all at once. Monkeys sit along the edges like locals at a dive bar, half-watching, half-waiting to see if you drop something edible. They’re unbothered for the most part.
The ceremony is both somber and beautiful. Bodies are cremated on the riverbanks just below. You can see the priests carry the wrapped bodies and gently place them onto bundles of stacked logs. Last rites are spoken. Prayers are said. Then the flames begin their work.
It doesn’t smell like much at first. Smoke, mostly.
But it feels heavy in your chest.
I watch in silence, just another person squinting into the fire. Watching a cremation is a strange thing. You think about how absurd life is. How fast it moves. How it ends.
For a few moments, I pray for those being cremated. I don’t know the people on those pyres. But I send them something anyway. A thought. A connection. A small promise that while they’re being turned to ash, some stranger saw them and cared, even if just for a moment.
I leave this place aware that I'm alive, that I'm lucky, and that I'd better keep making things count. Work hard and be nice is a motto we can all champion.
Burnt remains dot the Bagmati River. As I watch the flames rise slowly, I contemplate the fact that I’m in Kathmandu.
The flight in was the kind of bizarre that makes you reflect on every bad decision you’ve ever made. You might as well book a seat in the bathroom and brace your soul because you're going to be shitting yourself. The plane doesn’t land so much as it dives, rattling across peaks and valleys like a drunk mosquito. It makes you think about God. Then you see the Himalayas and forget for a minute that you’re in a steel tube defying gravity. They're that beautiful. Just enough to distract you from the chaos.
Getting through customs in Nepal? Surprisingly painless. Nepal greets you gently.
In town, I meet a Mongolian girl, a French guy, and two New Yorkers. Solo travelers like me. I get close with all of them by the time my trip in Nepal is over. The French guy tells me I’ve got a place to stay whenever I make it to Paris.
That night, we find ourselves tucked into a hole-in-the-wall Nepali joint. The kind of place with no signage, plastic chairs, and food that could either save your life or end it. The owner drags me into the kitchen and shows me how to make Rildok — a spicy potato soup mashed by hand with a wooden club. He lets me hold the club and beat the potatoes senseless.
We end our night by drinking Tongba, a warm millet-based liquor that tastes like sweet sake and kicks like a mule. You sip it slow until it hijacks your bloodstream.
We eat. We drink. We laugh. Everyone’s from somewhere else and no one cares. It’s a strange kind of comfort — being about as far from home as you can be, and still ending up across the table from two New Yorkers. The world collapses like that sometimes.
Earlier in the day, I spend time alone at Pashupatinath Temple and watched the Aarti ceremony. It's a fire ritual, meant to honor the gods and the dead all at once. Monkeys sit along the edges like locals at a dive bar, half-watching, half-waiting to see if you drop something edible. They’re unbothered for the most part.
The ceremony is both somber and beautiful. Bodies are cremated on the riverbanks just below. You can see the priests carry the wrapped bodies and gently place them onto bundles of stacked logs. Last rites are spoken. Prayers are said. Then the flames begin their work.
It doesn’t smell like much at first. Smoke, mostly.
But it feels heavy in your chest.
I watch in silence, just another person squinting into the fire. Watching a cremation is a strange thing. You think about how absurd life is. How fast it moves. How it ends.
For a few moments, I pray for those being cremated. I don’t know the people on those pyres. But I send them something anyway. A thought. A connection. A small promise that while they’re being turned to ash, some stranger saw them and cared, even if just for a moment.
I leave this place aware that I'm alive, that I'm lucky, and that I'd better keep making things count. Work hard and be nice is a motto we can all champion.
