Curry without Worry and Durbar Square

Curry without worry is a charity that cooks for and feeds 350 homeless people in Durbar Square , Kathmandu.  It was started by a Nepali man to feed the homeless in San Francisco and with its success he decided to come back to his home country and begin the project here .
Every Tuesday the food is donated and the volunteers come and chop veggies and make bread . The whole process takes around 5 hrs . I was lucky enough to be on tomato chopping duty and avoid the onions .
The sad thing is that a fair number of the people lining up for food are children . The street kids (obviously not all ) are known to be addicted to glue and well meaning tourists who donate cash to those begging are actually feeding their habit .

Durbar Square
Durbar square is the generic name for the plazas and areas opposite the old royal palaces . There are three Durbar Squares in the Kathmandu valley so you need to be specific when you talk about visiting one.
The Kathmandu Durbar square houses the palaces of the Malla and Shah Kings ( don't ask me who those folks are though ..)and contains many temples ( pagoda style) and water fountains and little court yards .
It also contains the Kumari Palace of the Living Goddess .  The Kumari worship a young virgin girl who they say is the living incarnation of the Hindi goddess Taleju . The girl is selected from a particular caste/clan and she is kept in the palace until she gets her period, in which case she reverts to common status . She passes by a particular window every day at 4pm and depending on her reaction to the waiting crowd it signifies the future of the person she looks at . Its believed that it brings good fortune if she just stands and gazes down at you , other reactions like crying signify illness , rubbing of the eyes means death, trembling means imprisonment ...etc .
On this occasion she was at the window for probably less than a minute and she didn't have any strange reaction to the bunch of mainly tourists below . Thankfully.