The Kathmandu Valley
It seems like nearly every day in the Kathmandu Valley, you see another UNESCO World Heritage site – we visited two yesterday afternoon alone, and have seen six so far in our first eight days in the country. (Though, unless the Indian embassy in Kathmandu counts as one, we bombed out today.)
Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed the pretty remarkable experience of walking, in about 20 minutes, from the holiest Buddhist temple in Nepal – the Bodnath stupa, with scores of Tibetans walking clockwise around it, praying to themselves while spinning prayer wheels – to Pashupatinath Temple, the holiest Hindu temple in the country.
Tibetans aside, Bodnath was pretty similar to the Swayambhunath ‘Monkey Temple’ we visited a few days earlier (but without the monkeys) and some other Buddhist stupas we’ve seen in Sri Lanka, Burma etc. So, while interesting, Bodnath is unfortunately one of those places that I would have been amazed by six years ago but now seems a bit run-of-the-mill. These days, something has to be pretty extraordinary to really impress me…
… which leads me conveniently to Pashupatinath. I didn’t really know what to expect, having not read up on it beforehand (probably a good thing in this case). We walked from Bodnath through a village to the temple complex, down past the monkeys (and deer!) to see an eclectic collection of shrines, temples, bridges, and cremation ghats on the banks of the Bagmati river – complete with Hindu bodies burning in front of our eyes – recalling our favourite city in India: Varanasi. Pashupatinath is not the type of place that inspires much joy and happiness, naturally, but as in India I found the atmosphere, the realness of it all, the confrontational nature of what you’re seeing, and the ability to contemplate life and death while watching a body burn in front of you, to be quite special. I’d definitely like to return at some point before leaving Nepal.
The other place we’ve been that’s worth mentioning is Bhaktapur, a small historic town that offers a few things Kathmandu can’t – namely some peace and quiet and the ability to stroll around town without getting caught up in throngs of people, car and motorbike horns etc. It’s a nice little place with three historic squares and much old, traditional Newari architecture, and it was worth staying overnight instead of day-tripping from Kathmandu as we got to see the town at its most peaceful and tourist-free. Like Kathmandu, Bhaktapur’s Durbar Square is dotted with temples and is World Heritage listed, and our €3 guesthouse virtually backed onto it. Fortunately, we enjoyed the best weather day we’ve had so far in Nepal on our first day there which kept this blue-sky-obsessed photographer happy.
But on that note, it’s pouring rain today and now I’m a bit worried that the weather won’t magically turn brilliant on October 1 as I’ve been half-expecting. I’m not so keen on trekking every day for three weeks straight while clouds cover the very mountains you’re walking all that way to see, so we’ll have to hope it improves over the next few days or else we might delay the start of the trek and do some other things first.
Tags: Asia, cremation ghats, Hinduism, Nepal, rain, South Asia
Nick