Seeing a shaman performing a ritual on a hot summer day in Eastern Nepal is not something most travellers would expect. But there he was in his white shirt and long skirt, chains and bells wrapped around his chest, and a headgear full of feathers. He was circling an obelisk, banging on what looked like a metal plate.
The man was stoic and did not flinch, change his expression or stop chanting when curious onlookers started taking his pictures and getting closer to him. He continued to walk down the viewing platform at Cholung Park in the city of Basantapur, Terhathum district, barefoot and unfazed by the blazing hot sun. Apart from the platform, the park also features a handful of traditional houses of the Limbu people, as well as a couple of modern versions.
After a short tour of one of the houses – which was turned into a museum – we walked into another building and “bumped” into the shaman, Rudra Bahadur. All smiles and ready for the camera, he talked endlessly and animatedly. He used to be a porter for trekkers going up the mountains, but he got bored of doing that, our interpreters and local travel companions – tour guide Pasang Sherpa, and Pushpa Thapa of the Community Homestay Network (CHN), a startup focusing on making positive social impacts via tourism – tell us.
The shaman comes from a traditional family that has long believed in animistic worshipping, something that is still practised among many of Nepali’s 142 castes. Rudra’s father was a shaman, .