Shiva's Birthday + Tibetan New Year = Busy Day

A few days ago Codie and I were staying at a Tibetan Monastery in Kathmandu that was situated next to one of the biggest stupas (Buddhist pointy thingies that are supposed to hold the relics of a Buddha (an enligthened person).....or in this case THE BUDDHA...and by relics, I mean bones. This one may have a toe, a finger, a ribcage. Who knows?) in the world. The place was peaceful, beautiful, and had the best alarm clock in the world. Starting at 3am the monks were in the main hall chanting, playing drums, and blowing on incredibly long copper horns (I'm talking long, like two people need to hold one, long). While this was quite a way to wake up, it was also really early and lasted all morning long. When we finally got up to see if this was an everyday occurrence or whether we were just the lucky two who got the all night show, we found out that, surprise, it was the last day of the celebration of Losar, Tibetan New Year, and we were invited to spend the afternoon celebrating. There are a lot of refugees here in Nepal and the Bouddha area of Kathmandu is an especially thriving Tibetan community. Crazy enough, we were at the monastery because it was within walking distance of another festival Mahashivaratri, SHiva's Birthday, which was being celebrated at Pashupatināth, the biggest SHiva center in Nepal.
So....we made a day of it. We spent 3 hours at the monastery as monks danced in elaborate outfits, that were like nothing I have seen--a cross between a witch hat and a royal outfit, as other monks in yak fur hats that resembled Spartan warriors watched on. The dancer would pick up different objects to be offered as Puja (Ritual offerings) and spin around with them gracefully. This lasted two hours before two guys with orange masks came out and ran away with an obscene cake featuring a depiction of the male anatomy that looked like it had been molded with feces. I didn't get it, but after they scurried away with the demon cake we all went outside and threw everything in a haystack (all while still doing the circle dance mind you) and then lit everything on fire. My kind of party!
It was late afternoon at this point and although the Tibetan monks threw one heck of a shindig, we still wanted to make it over to Shiva's Birthday party. That's when things got out of control. There were home made toll booths on the way down that kids had set up and made us pay to pass or we would suffer the wrath of their water balloons. A dollar fifty later, we reached the temple grounds.....and so did about 400,000 other Shiva devotees. We became part of the great flow, past the traditional singers and the eight year old rocking out on the drums, past the naked holy man dancing below us, past the crazy monkeys who kept trying to eat my popcorn, and ended up on a bridge watching funeral pyres burn over the river while talking to a group of men who wanted to explain the intricacies of Hinduism in broken English. All in all, a great day to explore two faiths living la vida loca.