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Young women and girls wandered the streets , dressed in brightly coloured traditional clothing , offering bhailo , traditional folk songs that were performed at various places . In return these performers receive tiny amounts of cash or food as payment . And then it occurred to me .
It seemed that Tihar is akin to what we call our holiday season .
Halloween , Thanksgiving , Christmas , and New Year all rolled into one , except of course without the heavy reliance on commercialism and mass-produced plastic crap that ends up in landfill year after year . No , Tihar has an authenticity that we Westerners perhaps once had .
The following morning felt a little muffled , a sore head , the result of the night before . We ’ d been beckoned
into a small alcohol store , something like what we Australians would call a ‘ bottlo ’ or the Brits would call an ‘ offy ’. The shelves adorned with what seemed every hard liquor that Nepal produced , whisky , vodka , and something that claimed to be gin , we opted for a beer despite it being straight from the shelf and not icy cold . The lads in the back room had called us in , motioning for us to sit
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