funeral pyre at the bagmati

Today Ewan and I went straight to the test site this morning to take the tandem tarbato out for a shake-down run.

When I got there, one of the Nepali EcoSystems guys, Balaram, mentioned he saw us last night on our way to the Birenda Convention Center - going across one of the small foot bridges that cross the Bagmati river, which seperates Patan (same city as Lalitpur) and Kathmandu.

I remembered crossing that bridge, and asked about the fire a group of people were together around below the bridge, on the bank of the Bagmati. The smoke was billowing up across the bridge. The people crossing were all covering their mouths and noses as they walked with their hands - we couldn't, since we were biking.

Balaram said that was a funeral pyre. The Bagmati's sacred to Hindus here, and funerals typically cremate the body on its banks.