Monday was Maha Shivaratri or the festival of Shiva - Here in Nepal the festival is traditionally celebrated at the Pashupati Temple and should be an incredible spectacle, with devotees paying tribute to Lord Shiva by smearing their bodies in ashes and praying until they fall into a meditative state. It is the only time of the year there the smoking of hashish is legal as this should help getting in the right meditative state. As I visited Pahhupati a few weeks ago, I didn't feel like going back (there should be more then 100000 people there on this day) and I therefore decided to explore the area just west of where we live where there is one of the old villages of the Kathmandu Valley called Kirtipur.
Down towards the river I passed the Dobi ground, the area where all the washing men (or Dobis as they are called here) come to wash and dry their clothes - I am not sure i want all my underwear to be hung out for all by-passers to see.
With the lack of water many of the people go to the local well to get collect water. We should keep this in mind as we ran out of water for 36 hours last week (I had to wash in a cup of water). In the end we had to pay double price to one of the water trucks to come and fill our water tank. 
One of the traditions of Maha Shivaratri is that the local kids can extort money from people by putting a rope over the road. Only after paying 1 or 2 rupees are you allowed through. One Rupee is of course only 1 Euro cent but when there are kids every 100 meters or so you run out of coins pretty fast.
Kirtipur is on a hill overlooking the whole of Kathmandu and the Himalayas (pretty much like our own house so I am not sure why I went all the way to Kirtipur!) - It was the scene for some serious fighting between some king and the locals 600 years ago - the king ended up winning and as a punishment cut of all the noses and lips of the local men. Like most Nepali towns it suffers from Urban sprawl (as much sprawl as a mountain permit) with the old city center occupying the top of mountain. The old city through, had some nice traditional Nepali Architecture and three nice temples.
With our car arriving some time during this spring both Lieke and I are getting a bit stressed out over the narrow streets of Kathmandu. Though we have driven in both Mexico and Yemen, it seems like that Nepal is the country where they have used the least land on transpotation infrastructure. The main road, which is about 50 meters from our house, is by Nepali standard quite OK - on that road is possible for two cars to pass each other easily. However, the road leading up to our house is quite a challenge. Not only is it very narrow, but the climb up to our house is extremely steep - on the top of this our drive way is going in the opposite direction than the road so you have to make a 180 degree turn at the same time as you go up a 30 degree climb - this often result in cars spinning and only touching the ground with three wheels. Luckily we have had quite a few visitors so we have been able to study how they have gotten up to our house and have after a big case study found out that you have to drive to the end of the road, turn around and access our house from this end. Quite a hassle but still a good idea to avoid ruining our new Toyota RAV4 when it arrives.
The school is having activity week this week and today it is PJ (Pyjamas) day for the pre schoolers. Thank god we checked yesterday as we thought it was PJ day for the whole school and we therefore had already made Livas PJ ready - As it turned out Liva had celebrety day and she ended up going as a tennis player (which one was not quite clear but being Danish I would say she went as Caroline Wozniacki). Joop really likes her night gown so she was quite happy that she could have it on the whole day. On the photo above you see Joop waiting for the school bus. As the Lincoln School is quite far away from where we live both Joop and Liva is being picked up every morning by bus. Joop is lucky, as she is starting an hour later than Liva and is only being picked up at 8.40. Liva on the other hand has to be by the road at 7.35 and though it has gotten a bit warmer in the last few days it can be rather cold this time of the morning.
We have been pretty busy since arriving to Kathmandu and the last couple of weeks I have been busy getting my CV out to NGOs and the UN in search of work. However, today I decided to take a break and explore Kathmandu a bit. So I drove the 10 km or so through Kathmandu to get to the Pashutpatinath temple complex. This is one of the holiest sites for Hindus, not just from Nepal but also from the rest of the world. Some of the temples are only accessible for Hindus but there is still plenty to see. On the picture above, a Nepali wedding couple is emerging from the most important temple.
However, you do not only go to the temple complex to get cremated. On the top of the hill on the other side of the river there are a number of temples that is dedicated to fertility where you newly weds go to prey for many health children.
From the top of the the hill you can see the whole temple complex with the small fertility temples in the forground and the big shiva temple on the right hand side
On my trip home I came past our local cremation ground in Patan - However, as it can be seen on the photo there was not as much action as there was on the Kathmandu side.
This afternoon has been nice and warm so we have spent some time on one of our terraces with a game of Twister. Liva is getting really good at reading - I have been really impressed how fast it has gone - she can now read beginners books on her own - the only thing stopping her is that she is a bit lazy at times
While we were still in Yemen I published a photo of our house as it looked like in Google Earth. This time I will just publish a link where you will be able to see our house and the neighborhood around us. If you click on the link below you will get to a satelite picture where our house is under the small cross in the absolute middle of the page. From there you can surfe around the city
http://wikimapia.org/#lat=27.6868295&lon=85.3106993&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2
According to Nepalise wisedom the coldest two weeks of the year are the two weeks that we have just entered. So we are gathering around the fire and the gas-heaters though it actually feels like it has become a bit warmer the last couple of days. The good thing with the cold weather is that it is becoming quite clear at least a couple of times a week. So today I went up to our roof top to get a clear shot at the Himalayas - I know I have done this earlier but this is the first shot from our house and I never become tired of looking at these massive mountains.
It seems like we are getting a new schedule every second day these days with new timings for load shedding - Friday we got a new schedule with 16 hours of planned power-cuts so if the cutbacks continue with the current rate we should have no electricity at all in a month or two. With the lack of electricity we are also getting all kind of other problems - without electricity water can't be pumped up, so now there is only 110 million liters a day to fulfill the demand of 230 million liters that are used in the Kathmandu vally.
It is of course nice when Lieke can combine one of our trips out of town with a bit of work. So when we went down to chitwan to see the National park, Lieke used the opportunity to visit some schools. So what follows here is my series of typical Unicef school photos.
We have now lived outside
We have now finally moved to our house. In what seemed like a real Christmas story the container arrived on the 24th of December. As we are living on a rather big hill and traffic with bigger trucks are not allowed during daytime in
The moving people were really efficient and by lunch time all 230 boxes and pieces of furniture had been moved to the house and the majority of the moving people went home leaving us and the two remaining people with the unpacking. However, we still managed to make the living room ready for the Christmas celebration at night through the food was not quite up to standard with Fried Rice instead of the usual elaborate dinner. Below is a picture as the living room looked on Christmas eve.
With Christmas approaching there are a number of activities here in Kathmandu – Last week there was the yearly Christmas market at his weekend we went to one of the hotels for a one day “fun park”. There were a number of rides and the kids tried out most things. Joop and Liva is off from school for the next three weeks so we have to be creative to entertain them. We are planning to go down to one of the National Parks over New Years.
The renovation of the house is now finished and they only need to do the paint job. Today our two nannies have been using the whole day cleaning up the place, and we hope that our shipment will arrive Tuesday or Wednesday so we can move in in time for Christmas. Before we move in however, we will need to install a battery inverter as the power cuts become worse and worse here in Nepal. The have just put out a new schedule and we will now have 70 hours of planned power-cuts a week. The reason should be that there are less water in the winter to produce energy from the hydropower plants. At the moment the energy production is only covering approximately 60% of the demand.