Getting to the forest was more difficult than we had imagined. Prevented from riding on the military truck with the royal army, we boarded one rickety government bus that took us to the city of Bhaktapur and a second that dropped us off at the village of Nala, about twelve miles east of Kathmandu. We travelled the final uphill mile by foot, on the unpaved roads of the Kathmandu Valley's steep eastern hills that the September monsoon rains had turned to mud. Our destination was the temple of the forest's protective goddess, Ban Devi, where we were greeted with a traditional Nepalese meal of potatoes, lentils, beaten rice, and cold boiled meat. The festival of Indra officially began early this morning at the royal palace in Kathmandu, and the festival's forest rituals were set to begin in a matter of hours. The focus of these rituals is a single tree that we are to cut down, transform into a ritual pole, and pull twenty miles by hand to the city of Kathmandu for the celebration of the nearly two-week long Indrajatra festival.

Hindu texts have described the details and goals of the Indra festival for some two thousand years, but this chapter is concerned only with the festival's contemporary performance in and around the city of Kathmandu, the capital city of modern Nepal, and the only place where the rites of the classical festival are still performed.