The land of public holidays

If there's one thing that the Nepali have plenty of, it's holidays. Sometimes it seems that a week cannot go by without at least one day off - depending on the source and calendar, there are some 35 national public holidays listed for this year. Plus additional regional, religious and gender-specific festivities.

And if they are not on holiday, they are on strike - with the current making of the constitution, over the past months various groups and parties have been regularly calling general strikes for or against new constitution clauses. I'm not sure how effective they are in achieving any change to the clauses, but at least they manage to paralyse all vehicle movements, close shops and of course limit work to those who can walk to the office.

Last week, apart from one day of strike, Nepal celebrated Teej, a mainly women's festival with its corresponding public holiday - but for female employees only. Theoretically. We still got emails from men saying that they will be out of office because it's the female holiday.

Celebrating the female holiday

As a proper women’s festival should, Teej is celebrated for the well-being, long life and health of… the husband! Women fast for purification of body and soul and for marital happiness (if they have a husband) or for a good husband (if they don't have one). The holiday is dedicated to Shiva and goddess Parvati (though from what I read, I'm not sure if their marriage was quite the example of marital bliss), which is why women visit Shiva’s temples and bring offerings of flowers, sweets and fruit. There is a lot of dancing and singing involved, and together with the red dresses worn on this day it’s a very colourful event.

We took advantage that we were in Kathmandu, and strolled over to the Lalitpur Durbar square in the evening.

Patan Durbar square

Wearing red, of course, where possible.

Unrelated to Teej, but amusing for me

But don't be fooled - though Teej was only a one-day public holiday, in reality the celebrations go on for three days and quite a few people take those three days off. Combine that with one day of strike in the same week... and wish yourself good luck in getting anything done :-)