Dashain

Our two weeks in Pokhara was during the major Hindu Festival of Dashain. Dashain is the longest and most auspicious of the festivals throughout the Nepalese calendar, celebrated by a majority of the castes throughout the country. Dashain includes fifteen days of celebration focusing on many different manifestations of Durga, a Nepali Goddess. The festival includes pujas, many offerings and thousands of animal sacrifices for the ritual holy bathing. Hence, the hundreds of thousands of goats that are marched from Tibet and the foothills of the Himalayas into the major populations centers of Nepal.
Luckily for us, we became good friends with the owner of our Hotel very quickly in our stay in Nepal. After many days of talking we were invited to the major ritual of the Dashain Festival named Dashami. We took a Tika and Jamara from the elders of their family and our family for blessing and good luck in the future. The ritual was a very intense experience with the iconic Hindu Tika placed on our forehead. After we received the Tika through the proper order of elders from their family and ours, we sat down for a large feast which included goat, rice, dal, and a yogurt curd. The event symbolized a unison of our two families and it was explained that both families were now harmonized as one family with blessings from the elders.
At the end of our stay the males and females exchanged gifts to their according gender. The females exchanged bangles, tikas, and scarves. The males exchanged hats and prayer shawls and we said our farewells. We extended our thanks and hoped that we could return the hospitality that we received perhaps some day in our home country.