Fear and Loathing in Bhaktapur

New Photos Up of Bhaktapur, Kathmandu and Sikkim (Finally): http://www.flickr.com/photos/cosimo-roams/sets/ (Unfortunately none of the night photos from Bhaktapur came out too well.. funny videos though!)

I've spent the last few days in Bhaktapur, a beautiful town just outside Kathmandu where almost every single house is a hand carved wooden masterpiece. It's been really nice to chill out for a few days here having given up on Mt Everest due to abject laziness. It's also Nepali New Year, 2067!!! This means the following. Everyone gets really, really, really drunk... for like a whole week solid.

It's so funny being here, having been in India for so long. I mean, Indians drink. And when they drink they get wasted (in exact proportion to the number of seconds it takes them to neck their litre of whiskey.), but it always seemed pretty good natured, with laughing and singing and falling and joking.

Here seems very different and I don't know if this is just a Bhaktapurian thing or a Nepali New Year thing. They are properly agro (that's aggressive)... the men (and it's only the men) strut around, chests out...preening like peacocks, hammered and proud as if it is some ancient birthright (which it most likely is) knocking into people (me) staring people out (also me) generally acting like twats. There are men in colourful hats who are the worst, I think they are the town elders as; a)They sit around doing nothing, b)They're all obnoxious, c)They are the most drunk and the kids who for the most-part imitate as kids do. I've been observing amused the last few days, taking a break from being sociable or interacting with anyone beyond restaurant transactions, as I watch the men of this town descend ever deeper into drunken debauchery... as the nights get louder and the men more prickishly aggressive and drunk and stupid.

There is a tradition of pulling a huge temple on wheels up a hill which I watched the other night. It was ridiculous... apparently people die every year as they fall under the massive wooden wheels. I saw nothing of the sort, only a hilarious display of widespread drunken ineptitude as a hundred men screamed and tugged and snatched at the ropes for two hours only to move it approximately not-an-inch... I haven't laughed so much in months... (I was not alone in the this... the women it seems do see the funny side in all this).

Hilarious. But they do have strong stomachs. I saw two goats and three chickens having their heads removed by hungover men this morning. Having their heads removed by hungover men with rusty knives and their blood drenched over the many statues of gods that are dotted around this town. Headless animals running and kicking and bleeding their frantic asses around the squares was enough to turn my stomach... not it seems, theirs.

And so tonight is apparently the night of fights, where everyone throws stones and punches and kicks their fellow man through the squares of Bhaktapur. Again, apparently an ancient yearly tradition with its roots firmly in the brain-oxygen repressing nature of beer and whiskey. I'd love to stay for this but I'm trying to relax and strangely don't want to be hit in the face by a rock. Back to Kathmandu for me.