Indian fig

This is clearest above Zafferana, where you’ll find an empty summer home, a van selling pistachio cream and Indian fig honey, and a blanket of black lava that coats the woodland like paint.

And, always, winter’s fog and mist, one of Nepal’s seasonally distinct languages, shrouding the shrines in Pashupatinath, one of the world’s holiest Shiva temples, or cloaking a farmer by the valley’s sacred Indian fig trees.

Deep in the night the massy locust sheds, Quench my hot limbs; or lead me through the maze, Embowering, endless, of the Indian fig; Or thrown at gayer ease, on some fair brow, Let me behold, by breezy murmurs cool'd, Broad o'er my head the verdant cedar wave, And high palmettos lift their graceful shade.

The Banian or Indian fig tree, is perhaps the most beautiful and surprising production of nature in the vegetable kingdom.

Trees have frequently been identified with gods: thus in the Panma Purána, the religious fig tree is an incarnation of Vishnu, the Indian fig tree of Rudra, and the Palasa of Brahma.