Watching a human corpse burn was not what I thought it would look like.

The cremation service I witnessed at the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, was graphic yet peaceful. As the body arrived onto the platform where it would be put ablaze, it was cloaked in shrouds of white and gold. The departed were placed on a latticework of cut logs that sat about three feet high, assuring enough fuel to provide total incineration.As family and friends gathered to bear witness in the Hindu rites of passage to the finality of this life, the busy process of uncovering the right shoulder, arm, and ultimately the entire head involved placing copious amounts of butter to help their loved one ignite.

I did not expect to see any part of the deceased’s remains, much less their face. The butter gave their skin a yellow, jaundiced tone. At the conclusion of a ceremonial walk around the open-faced corpse, a wooden stick was lit on fire and applied to their brow. Watching flames shoot out of eye sockets jarred me. Very quickly thereafter, wet straw was applied in ample quantities on top of the pyre to help with flammability, venting torrents of white smoke. The air filled with the smell of a grass fire.

The burning abutted the Bagmati River, where the still-simmering ashes and embers would eventually be swept, clearing the way for the next service of commitment in the endless line of human mortality.

I have had a lifelong fascination with funeral rites. It started when I watched the burial of President Kennedy on TV when I was four years old. I pored over photographs in Life and Look magazines that my parents had bought as collectible publications of such a historic event. Unknowingly, my love of the captured image was born at the same time.

Sixty years after those fateful events, I traveled to Nepal to better my understanding of this long-held photographic passion and to amplify my cultural language. My rudimentary knowledge of this fabled country was an imaginary region of great spiritual fulfillment where human levitation was not only possible but probable. I found out it is highly terrestrial.

The first thing you need to know about traversing the capital of Kathmandu is that motorcycles can brush by you safely at breakneck speeds but leave you with a new understanding of personal space. You do not have time to look behind you to make sure you are clear of the approaching engine because you are too busy looking forward to avoid walking into another motorbike, person, hole in the street, or other obstruction. Trekking to your destination is an exercise in securing your position like driftwood floating on a river as currents of people move swiftly with and against you.

The first market I visited was a pop-up affair that begins daily at sunrise and concludes by 8:30 a.m. Street vendors sell their wares in front of still-shuttered brick-and-mortar storefronts. They must be gone by the prescribed hour. Vegetables, fruit, flowers, knives, scarves, locks, and practically anything for sale in a traditional store are laid out into the street. The pedestrian hazards begin to add up. Smells wafting from street-made dumplings blend into the sweetness of flowers for sale a few feet away. Visually, Nepal is a beautiful place. Because it is a crossroads of culture, religion, and cuisine, the colors of dress, buildings, and food are vibrant and varied.

This scene is repeated in the historic city of Bhaktapur, a UNESCO World Heritage site that was my next destination.

The protected plazas of this ancient town are straight out of a Hollywood movie set. But this is no fantasy. Children rush to make class on time, busy professionals fly by in vehicles traveling corridors that were never built for them, and store operators beckon passersby to examine the inside of their retail kingdoms. You might see and hear a parading group of musicians celebrating a wedding or a prostrated worshiper chanting in front of one of the many shrines. Maintaining infrastructure requires a rotation from manual washing to highly skilled craftsmanship. The wheel of life turns at full speed.

I also ventured to a neighborhood near the bottom of the economic rung. The familiar sights of ill-clothed, dirty children playing imaginary games in squalor are all too common throughout the world. There is a significant difference here. People seem proud. They do not shy away from being seen. Their conditions may be challenged, but their characters are not. The clear message is that life here happens like everywhere else. We are born, we love, we cry, we hunger, we replicate, we hate, and we die—beseeching the everlasting question, why?

Amid all, the serenity of committing a broken body to eternal rest in a furnace of gratitude was reassuring. As flames licked into the evening sky, I noticed some people leaving shortly after the ceremonial lighting of the funeral pyre, even as their loved ones’ bodies continued to burn. That simple exit seemed to lay the predicate for the mystery of faith. We were here. Now we are not.