Hey there guys!
We’re currently in the Nepalese festival season right now, a time when a lot of amazing cultural events occur including Dashain, the most significant festival of the year. The whole country more or less shuts down, with no post and very little shops open for this 2 week long festival (October 6-15). People visit their families, return to their villages, sacrifice animals as offerings to the gods and feast. In the leadup to Dashain, communities will make a giant swing out of logs so children and the young at heart can play. Next up is Tihar or Diwali (October 25th-29th), a week long festival where animals are given their own days to be worshipped and thanked, including dogs, crows, cows and all animals that maintain an intimate and divine connection with humanity. It also involves the lighting of many, many candles which makes for beautiful streets at night time.
With all of this disruption to work though, delays and interruptions are inevitable at this time of year. During this time we might not be able to answer emails promptly, but should be able to get to them every week or so. We’ve also done our best to smash out work beforehand and get what we can sent out, but there’s only a few of our smiths and new orders rolling in all the time. Any current orders are looking at delays of up to 2 weeks from our usual 4-6 week timeline. Any orders that are placed after Dashain will run into smaller delays as well, though we should be all caught up and back to normal by the end of November.
Nepal runs on a very different schedule to the rest of the world and tradition always comes first here even if it is an inconvenience. Check out our instagram or facebook pages to see what kind of festivities we’re getting up to while off the tools!
Take care,
Andrew and the Kailash Team
