Nepal is Beautiful

Remember slides? I still have tens of thousands of 'em -- and every once in a while I digitize some of my favorites.

Here's one's from Nepal:



The woman in the crimson sari is performing a puja, or prayer rite, at the gilded, Hariti Devi pagoda temple on the outskirts of Kathmandu, at a stupendous Hindu-Buddhist temple complex named Swyambhunath, also called The Monkey Temple because of a troop of some 250, semi-wild, sacred, Rhesus monkeys who live amongst the forest and shrines on the hill, overlooking the entire valley.

Hariti is the Hindu goddess of smallpox and other epidemics; and people pray to the goddess for her protection. To Buddhists, she is Sitala, a mother goddess and protector of children.

It's interesting to scan the old slides, and see how even the best ones have less resolution and less detail than the digital images we shoot today.