Pashupatinath Temple

Pashupatinath sits on both banks of the Bagmati River, a few kilometres east of central Kathmandu, and the cremation fires at the main burning ghat have been burning almost without interruption every day and night for as long as the temple has existed. The smoke rises over the river, mixing with the sounds of chanting, temple bells and the traffic of the nearby road bridge, and the whole scene has an intense mundane-sacred quality that is impossible to prepare for. Non-Hindus cannot enter the inner temple, but the outer complex — the ghats, the shrines, the caves and the large courtyard — is fully accessible, and the cremation activity is visible from the opposite bank, making the river itself a kind of boundary between observer and observed.

The Sadhus who gather in the outer courtyard are the most visually arresting presence at Pashupatinath, their bodies dusted with ash, their hair matted into dreadlocks and their faces painted with the vertical third eye of Shiva. Some sit in extreme postures of meditation under the trees; others accept donations for photographs in a transactional relationship that has become as much a part of the site as the temple itself. The two-tiered pagoda of the main temple is covered in beaten copper and gilt, its gilt finial soaring above the treeline, and even from the outside the quality of the craftsmanship signals that this is not an ordinary neighbourhood shrine but one of the most important Hindu sites in South Asia.

The Bagmati is considered sacred, and the ritual bath taken in it before puja is a prerequisite for worshippers approaching the temple. Pilgrims in various states of purification — some naked, some robed, some covered in ash — move between the shrines that line both banks, and the range of animal sacrifices performed at Pashupatinath is wider than at most Hindu temples, with goats and buffalo offered at subsidiary shrines on festival days. The site reaches its most intense state during the Mahashivratri festival in February or March, when thousands of devotees fill the entire complex, the fires burn day and night, and the Sadhus perform their most elaborate rituals in the lead-up to the all-night celebration.

What photographs cannot capture is the smell — a persistent mix of woodsmoke, incense, sandalwood and the earthy organic smell of the river — and the sound, which never fully stops from dawn to midnight. The temple sits at the bottom of a valley slope, and on a quiet afternoon the smoke from the cremation fires drifts up through the trees while devotees circle the outer shrines at their own pace, making Pashupatinath less a destination than a continuously operating system of faith that happens to have an extraordinarily beautiful building at its centre.

Pashupatinath is one of the most sacred Hindu pilgrimage sites in the world, dedicated to Lord Shiva in his aspect as Lord of All Animals.

The cremation ghats on the Bagmati riverbank are among the few places in the Kathmandu Valley where Hindu death rites are practised openly and continuously.

The Sadhu community gathered here is one of the most photographically compelling in South Asia.