Day 4: Still Waiting

Got up at 5:20 this morning, shockingly all on my own. Got everything all packed up in our bags and brought everything downstairs, hopefully to get on a flight this morning. We were supposed to leave by 6:30. Sat in the lobby and waited for our van to arrive to take us to the airport. And waited. And waited till now. There is 0 visibility in Lukla so we are waiting here till it clears. Fingers crossed.... No luck. After hours of waiting we were told the visibility in Lukla was still at zero and we were not going to be flying today. It's worrying. We decided to all go and see Durban Sqaure and a stupa in the center of Kathmandu. Durban square contains the hosue of Kumari, the living goddess, many temples as well as residences of the royal family when they were in power. The Kumari is a young Buddhist girl who is chosen around the age of 2 or 3 from a certain caste in Nepal. She is chosen from a group of girls who are put each put in a dark room on their own. Then a group of men dressed in terrifying masks and holding freshly severed buffalo heads come in and throw blood at her. The girl who doesn't cry out of all of these is likely to be the Kumari as a living goddess would not be scared by such small things. The last hurdle is the girl then has to pick personal belongings of the last Kumari, much like the Dalai Lama. She then becomes a Hindu goddess, changing her faith. Until her first period or first injury where she bleeds she will be worshipped as a living goddess. After either of these events occurs she has to leave the palace built for her and once again becomes a regular person however she is considered unlucky and extrememly unlucky for anyone to marry.
After seeing Kumari's house (she sits in view of the public for 4 hours a day but we had been waiting for our plane!) we went to the Unesco world heritage site in Kathmandu, a temple. There is a saying in Nepal that there are as many temples are there are people in Nepal and that is starting to appear to be true. Nepal is the melting pot for Buddhism and Hinduism and this temple, like the monkey temple yesterday had both Hindu and Buddhist elements. We went to see an art school along the edge of the stupa where paintings are made using brushes which are often only one hair thick. The masters take 20 years to learn the skill and we got to watch some of them in their workshop. Our guide for the day, Ram, had many pearls of wisdom. My favorite: Be positive. Think positive thoughts. They may you happy. Happy makes you healthy. Healthy makes you beautiful. And Beauty leads to Nirvana.
Trying to think positive thoughts and keep fingers crossed for tomorrow!