Swayambhunath, Bodhnath and Patan, Nepal

Since we'd come down from the mountains a few days earlier than we'd expected, we were happy to take advantage of the extra time to explore the greater Kathmandu Valley.  We hired a taxi for the day to drive us around.  Our first stop was Swayambhunath, a Buddhist holy place also known as the Monkey Temple after the monkeys that guard the temple, and feast on the offerings of food that are brought for the gods.

Swayambhunath is perched atop a steep hill.  Local legend says this hill rose spontaneously out of the lake that used to cover the Kathmandu Valley (geologists agree that the area used to be a lake).  Around 460 A.D. construction of a temple began here.  By the 1200’s the temple had become an important Buddhist center.  After passing through the gate at the bottom we looked up the impossibly long flight of dusty stairs and were glad we’d made this our first stop, before the heat of the afternoon sun.  A cat, undeterred by the roaming monkeys, leaped up the stairs easily ahead of us, then paused to eye us as we lumbered to the top, sweaty and out of breath.

The hill is topped by a huge Buddhist stupa, which is an imposing white dome topped by the face of Buddha wearing a tall spire of a hat.  The question-mark shaped nose that is depicted in Nepal on Buddha’s face is the Nepali symbol for ek (one), and is a symbol of the unity of all life.  The base of the stupa is encircled by prayer wheels, on each one the Buddhist chant of Om Mani Padme Hum is written in Nepali.  All over Nepal, over and over again (including on the top of this hill), we heard the singing version of this chant pumping out of battery-operated boom box speakers.   I’m not certain, but it sure seems like Buddhism has only one song.

Behind the stupa, a huge crowd was gathered, some waiting in line to pay their respects at the shrine also sitting atop the hill that is dedicated to the Hindu goddess of smallpox, Hariti, who also doubles as a Buddhist deity.  For some reason, people also pray to Hariti for success on exams, so there were many families in line with school-age children.  Other people milled about near the open fires that were burning on the ground, or lighting the small butter votives as offering.  Monkeys hopped down from their perches on top of the stupa or temple to snatch bits of food, then hopped back up, clambering over the prayer wheels and stone carvings of deities.

Our next stop was an even larger Buddhist stupa called Bodhnath.  Our guidebook says it was first built at this spot near 600 A.D., after the Nepali king Songtsen Gampo was converted to Buddhism by his two wives; one the Nepali princess Bhrikuti, and the other a Chinese woman named Wencheng Konjo.  The big mounds of stupas were originally built to bury holy objects or people, and some believe that a piece of bone once belonging to the Buddha is interred at Bodhnath.

We lingered awhile at Bodhnath, enjoying the peace offered by the pedestrian-friendly (car and motorbike free) road that rings the base of the stupa.  From a rooftop café, where we ordered fresh lemon sodas, we watched monks in cinnamon-colored robes mingle below with the tourists.  There are numerous Buddhist monasteries in the quiet lanes surrounding Bodhnath.

Our last destination of the day was the neighboring town of Patan.  Only 20 minutes away from Kathmandu by taxi, Patan was once a separate kingdom, and has its own Durbar Square (Palace Square).  Patan’s Durbar Square is intensely atmospheric, which much more architectural diversity than Kathmandu’s, and it’s more peaceful too, a good place to grab a shady spot and people watch.

A portion of the former palace was restored in the 1990s by an Austrian non-profit working with the Nepal government, and it houses a beautiful museum.  I especially enjoyed the old black and white photographs and etchings from the early 1700s and 1800s that depicted Patan when it was first “discovered” by westerners.  Eerily, the square today looks exactly as it did three hundred years ago; crumbling but still beautiful.  Even the style of Nepali dress favored by the old-timers hasn’t changed.

Mohit bought a dis- appointingly freezer- burned cup of ice cream, and while we sat in the shade I watched two little kids run up to a nut and popcorn vendor waving dirty rupee notes.  They each bought a cone of toasted nuts and then strolled away happily, talking to each other a mile a minute as they walked right down the middle of the street.  They couldn’t have been more than five years old, and I winced as motorbikes swerved to avoid them.

The next morning, our flight was delayed three times by the heavy brown smog that had settled in the valley; when we finally took off we both strained to see the mountains in the distance but the air pollution obscured everything more than fifty feet away.  But we finally spied dozens of snow-capped peaks framed by dazzling blue sky to the north after our plane rose above the cloud cover.  I hope that Nepal is able to sort out its political and economic challenges without compromising its stunning natural beauty and rich cultural history.

Kathmandu, Nepal

When we first landed in Kathmandu, we were surprised by the order and relative cleanliness of the streets.  We’re staying in the touristy Thamel neighborhood, surrounded by creature comforts like bakeries with fresh warm cinnamon buns, espresso machines, burrito cafes, Irish bars, live bands playing Bob Marley and the Beatles, and plentiful wifi internet.  The streets in Thamel are dust-free, and there’s no trash in the gutters, no animal dung to step over.  Not surprisingly, it turns out that this is definitely an artificial oasis of calm surrounded by the “real” Kathmandu, which we explored on foot on our first day back in the city after returning from our week in the mountains.

In fact, the real Kathmandu is quite possibly the dustiest, most chaotic city we’ve ever been in, and the old town looks more ancient and crumbling than anywhere I’ve ever seen.  I loved it!  Though dodging the motorbikes and rickshaws, navigating the crowds, and avoiding the women armed with brooms who were whipping up the dust on their thresholds into noxious clouds quickly sapped our energy.  We frequently ducked into alleyways or courtyards to momentarily evade the chaos.

The buildings in the old town look like they’ve been lived in for a thousand years- and some of them probably  have.  The stone walls are cracked and bowed and leaning precariously, and the ornate wooden balconies that were probably elegant at one time now look dangerously possible of crumbling.  And these buildings are all still energetically occupied, with bustling markets at the ground floors and laundry hanging from the old windows on the upper floors.  People must have been half as tall when these buildings were built, because the ancient rows of dilapidated old wooden doors that swing open at ground level to reveal dark caves of shops are about four feet tall; they look live shops for dwarves.  Or maybe hobbits.

We wandered into Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, the former seat of the city’s kings, where the royal palace is surrounded by a hodgepodge of tiered Hindu and Buddhist temples built mostly between 1100 and 1700.  In the unyielding midday sun (the blue of the sky turned white by the thick air pollution), we mingled with tourists from all over the world, though the tourists seem to be well outnumbered by the millions of pigeons.

I suspect the two dreadlocked men who sidled up to Mohit aren’t really holy men, and that they’ve donned their costumes for the rupees that they beg off tourists like us who take photographs of them.  After I snapped the photo, the taller one bumped fists with me, Obama-style.

The Nepali people seem to have a very casual relationship with religion.   In the shade of the thousand-year old temples in Durbar Square and on every street corner throughout the city, drunks lay sprawled out to sleep away the afternoon, and men gather to argue and gossip.  One of the temples we visited is dedicated to a Hindu god that also doubles as a Buddhist icon.  The street levels of many temples are occupied by shops selling mundane everyday goods like plastic buckets and shampoo; at others, the stairs are draped with pashmina shawls and yak wool blankets for sale.

And yet, people still pause as they pass  to honor the gods, putting their palms together, bowing their heads, reaching up to ring the brass bells, and scattering some red powder or marigold petals on the stone carvings of the gods.

I’m struggling to understand the complex political turmoil in this country.  The former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala died on Saturday, and the whole city ground to a halt as a national holiday was declared.  From our taxi window, we could hear the roar of a crowd assembled in the cricket stadium, and I saw hundreds of people in line in a field nearby.  We learned later that they were all gathered to pay their respects to Koirala, who had been appointed, overthrown and reinstated multiple times during his long political career, spent time in prison, and then led the 2006 revolt to overthrow Nepal‘s former authoritarian king.  The men working at our hotel camped out in the lobby glued to the television all day and into the night, watching repetitive coverage of his life and last rites.

And yet we have been reading about the rampant corruption of government in Nepal.  As in India, bribery is common and expected.  We witnessed the strength of the challenging Maoist uprising in the neighboring city of Patan, where a throng of people marched through the streets waving flags bearing the symbol of socialism and shouting loudly.  When we were hiking through mountain villages, we saw Maoist graffiti on the stone walls of homes; apparently the Maoists draw their strength from the poorest villages of western Nepal, where rural people are fed up with being overlooked and cheated by the central government in Kathmandu.

This is a fascinating city, and a country of varied and beautiful geography.  But Nepal clearly has daunting political and social obstacles (the caste system remains strong here, and infant morality is third-highest in the world) to sort out before average quality of life can substantially improve.  Over dinner, Mohit and I debated and wondered how and why the west is so wealthy and so lucky in comparison to the poor luck of the draw for people in this part of the world.  Here, we’ve been forced to acknowledge how much we take for granted the most important things; stable democratic government, quality healthcare, and free education.