Kathmandu, The temple of Lord Pashupatinath here, one of the holiest Hindu shrines, is also a haven for the dying. If you die there, according to popular Hindu belief, you are freed from the cycle of rebirth and pain. The Pashupati Arya Ghat Sewa Kendra is a three-storey building housing the very old and the terminally ill whom hospitals have discharged.

One of them is 81-year-old Jagat Bahadur Thapa, who lay comatose on his makeshift bed on the floor. A man, playing a harmonium, softly chanted: "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna".

The writing on the wall behind Thapa's head said: "I am breathing my last. Don't make a din but let me hear the name of god. He Ram!"

Gomali Khadka, 53, came with her daughter and two sons to seek salvation for her husband Bahadur Khadka.

The 64-year-old had a chest problem and the hospital said there was nothing more they could do.

"So we brought him here," said a stoic Gomali. "If he doesn't recover, I pray he is spared the additional pain of rebirth."

But before death can claim the arrivals, it has to grapple with one last enemy. That is the 'ghate vaidya' - literally meaning doctor at the cremation ground on a riverbank - who steps in where hospitals and doctors have given up.

At present, there are two of them, Subarna Vaidya, 54, and his brother Sarda, 49.

Their family members have been ayurveda practitioners for generations. The brothers say they learnt to gauge if a man's pulse and energy were failing him from their father Bharat Vaidya, who was the ghate vaidya before them.

The progression of a patient towards death is marked literally. If he is ill but not dying, he is kept on a bed on the topmost floor where the brothers treat him using ayurveda principles.

If his condition deteriorates, he is brought to the first floor. When he goes into a coma, he is brought to the ground floor where in preparation for the last rites, the bed gives way to a raised wooden platform.

Once the vaidya judges that the time of death is near, he is taken to the last step of the riverbank, and kept so that his feet touch water, to ensure that his soul will go to heaven when he breathes his last.

Since the last eight years, 1,803 people have come here. Some of them have even recovered, like 92-year-old Kashi Nath Uprety who was comatose two years.

The hospice can take 22 patients, thanks to donors. Everything is free - right from medicines to bedclothes to food.

Ghate vaidyas, Sarda says, are a part of Nepal's tradition.

"We are paid Nepali Rs.150 a month, which is a pittance," he says. "Still we do it because this is a way of conserving something unique to Nepal."

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