OK, so this post is a layup, as the material is so easy it practically writes itself. The only complicated part is getting you to identify the Kumari Chowk, the building I'm talking about here. The large white building is some weird extension of the palace, then there's a gap and a smallish red brick building lies to the right, with some people gathered underneath. Unfortunately it's the only photo I have of the Kumari chowk because the building doesn't really stand out among the others, but the story does. Inside resides the Kumari, who is a living goddess. There are actually eleven kumaris from different cities, but the Kathmandu Kumari is the most famous. The Kumari is the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, who inhabits a long succession of specially selected Kumaris in a process going back many centuries. Confusingly, the Kumari is chosen from the Shakya clan, which is Buddhist. Only girls three to five years old are eligible, and all such girls from the Shakya clan are inspected and interviewed by a panel of elders. Any girl who has all 32 auspicious signs, such as eyelashes like a cow, a body like a banyan tree, a neck like a conch shell, is shortlisted. (Think of the selection process as an American Idol competition if it helps understand, and don't focus too much on what a three year old with a conch shell neck and banyan tree body would look like). Then the lucky girls are put in a dark room filled with severed buffalo heads, while men in scary masks jump around screaming. Any girl who remains calm during this then has to identify certain items belonging to the previous Kumari, and the winner gets to live in relative luxury as the next Kumari in her house on Durban Square, the Kumari Chowk. There she stays indoors except on a few festival days a year, the most famous of which when she bestows a special blessing on the king's forehead. You're never supposed to see her, but if you bribe the guards downstairs she may pop out of the upstairs window for a quick view. Her feet are never allowed to touch the ground, so she is carried everywhere, and she's always caked with makeup that makes JonBenet Ramsay look like an amateur. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and when she gets her period, she's tossed out and given a pension by the government and a new Kumari is chosen. It's not easy getting on with life as an ex-Kumari either, since anyone who marries her will die an early and horrible death.