Hundreds of expats from all around the world live here in Kathmandu – we get the benefit of celebrating Nepali holidays with the locals and celebrating foreign holidays with expats! Halloween is huge in North America and is starting to make a presence in the UK, Australia, and some other European countries. Families from Scotland, USA and Canada initiated the festive celebrations here…

Home-made MnM costumes – colorful T-shirts, cardboard circles, cotton stuffing and a bit of white fabric – that’s all it took!

At The British School, several kids and ALL teachers were in costume! All 6 PE teachers dressed as Incredible Hulk; several teachers had gruesome, blood-spattered, scary attire; there was a cowgirl and a few witches and several creative costumes from the teachers. The kids were equally gory, cute and creative – ghosts, witches, goblins, Harry Potter characters, and many more.

As is expected for Halloween, the fun began as the sun set… We participated in a walking, set-path, trick-or-treating event! About 15 families participated and we all had a ball. We met at House #1 and walked together to 7 other homes as a massive mob all decked out in our costumes! I think some locals thought we were crazy, some locals understood that we were celebrating a foreign holiday and some knew exactly what was going on and called out “Happy Halloween” to us!

Prakash leading the kids through the song, Have You Ever Seen a Pumpkin. We learned it years ago at the West Regional Library in Cary, NC and remember it fondly each Halloween.

Since we were visiting only a few houses (as compared to the several dozen we would have visited in the USA), each family offered more than just a sweet treat for the kiddies. There were games, songs, and treats for the adults too: a neat game where apples are floating in a large bucket of water sitting on the ground and the child stands over the bucket with the back of a fork in their mouth, releasing the fork hoping to puncture an apple ; standard bobbing for apples game ; a really cool scavenger hunt over the front and back yard exploring for the sweet treats ; the “Have You Ever Seen a Pumpkin” song ; and French fries, pumpkin bread and wine for the adults. All in all, a great substitute celebration – complete with costumes, sweet treats and a trick or two! The only thing missing was bright orange PUMPKINS!

Charles joined us for the evening – he is an intern at ICIMOD and is in a “gap year” after finishing his undergrad at Harvard and before starting his PhD at MIT next fall.