Day 43 - Wednesday, Nov. 27 - Nepal

Another breakfast at the low traditional tables.  Apparently neither the French nor the Germans like them.  We Americans do, I’m told, but we only make up about 15% of the hotel’s clientele, so we always have a choice of where we want to sit.  In addition to other ecological facettes of this hotel, the honey here is fresh from the comb and the marmalade is homemade.

Changu Narayan

       Rup picks me up before 10 and we’re off to not-Kathmandu.  Off to the east, past the airport.  On the way, he explains a bit about his country.  Kathmandu lies near its center and benefits from agriculture, industry and tourism.  The eastern region offers more economic opportunities than the west, which is more cultural but has more unemployment.  Many people there go to India to work.  So it’s in the west that the Maoists are most powerful, now even holding a few seats in Parliament.  But there is still some unrest and so some U.N. forces have stayed since 2006.  The king is now just a figurehead and the President is a “rubber stamp”.  Power lies with the Prime Minister.  (Nepal is a three-branch government, like the U.S.:  executive, legislative, judicial.)
       Outside the city we soon see farms.  Many grow that yellow flowing plant I saw the other day in India; Rup says it’s mustard seed.  Our road twists and turns upward, with each turn seeming to leave the road narrower.  Here the hills are terraced.  In several places I see haystacks; it’s harvest time, including for rice.  Birds are everywhere, so scarecrows are too.  In one field I see a man molding clay into bricks.

       And when we get to Changu Narayan, the oldest pilgrimage site of the Kathmandu Valley (3rd c), I see why Rup’s brought me here.  Especially as it’s now a World Heritage Site.  The 2015 earthquake left devastation everywhere and rebuilding is still on-going.  The Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu has been repaired but other monuments are still broken and others are totally destroyed.  One statue is of a kneeling woman and has no head.  I thought it was lost in the quake, but actually it’s a goddess who beheaded herself to offer up her blood!  (Actually almost all the statues in Nepal are splattered with color and blood from sacrifices... but not of heads.)
       As we reach the temple, a monk is sweeping the slates in front of the temple and a young woman (!) is seated, beating the drum rhythmically for a ceremony.  The monk runs the tourists off, but Rup sits us down near the drummer and we watch while a second monk walks around the outside of the entire temple twice, sprinkling holy water.  Then a few prayers are muttered, the monk throws the rest of the water on the offeratory stela... and, with a nimble goat-like leap, he jumps over the bars blocking the entrance to the temple and is gone.  The woman brings her drumming to an end... and it’s over.
       We walk around the gilded temple, with stone animals guarding all four entrances and the ten incarnations of Vishnu carved in the struts.  As we circle, we see a life-sized statue of a kneeling Garuda, covered with red paint left from previous festivals.  Other statues date back to the 7th and 9th centuries.  And a column built atop a turtle, rising between a conch shell on another column and a towering trident.  It’s all very dense, and I can’t imagine what it looked like before the devastation.  (Building materials and half-finished tenon-and-mortise beams are everywhere.  So are visiting school children.)

Bhaktapur

Back we go downhill, to the cultural city of Bhaktapur, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Surrounded by walls and gates, the city of 100,000 people lies at an altitude of 1400 m (4,600 ft), down from Changu’s 1540 m (5,050 ft).  It’s tried hard to keep its old look, with grants awarded to local people to buy wood, traditional bricks and tiles so they will build in the traditional style.  Municipal money is also spent on keeping the city clean, much more so than in Kathmandu or anywhere I saw in India.  To help with funding and to cover restoration, the city charges an entrance fee to all foreign tourists: 1500 Nepali rupees, which is a little over $13.  Something I’m very willing to pay for such a good cause.

Golden Gate

       Our first stop, after climbing uphill past shops, coffee houses and restaurants, is Durbar Square (yet another one).  On the corner is the striking Palace of 55 Windows, made of red brick (the most used construction material here) on the first two floors and of timbered windows and walls on the top level, with a tiled roof.  Rup tells me the wood is from the “sal” tree, previously a valuable Himalayan timber tree which it’s now forbidden to cut down. There is much ecological protection in Nepal. 
       Next to the palace is the Golden Gate, with its intricate pagoda-like roof with multiple ornaments, and an armed guard.  The gate leads to the entrance of the National Art Gallery and to an old palace with its own fountain/pool, where a father is trying to show his young son a recalcitrant carp in the green waters.  It was in this pool that the king and court bathed in the morning before prayers or breakfast.  There’s another gate, the magnificent Lion’s Gate built by artisans whose hands, after completion, were cut off by the king so they’d be unable to make anything like it again.

Bhaisan Temple

       Also on the square, the Vatsala Temple being rebuilt after the earthquakes.  And a large bell called “the bell of barking dogs”, whether because of the sound it makes or the fact that it made all the dogs bark when it rang, I don’t know.  The Pashupatinah Temple has erotic wooden carvings, always a crowd-pleaser.  Yet another temple - Taleju - was one for Hindus only; perhaps that’s because the king is supposed to be an incarnation of Vishnu?  (And if that sounds silly, think of the pharaohs... or even medieval European kings who were sent down by God.)
       We take a coffee-and-tea break on the wooden veranda of a building overlooking the square.  From up here, it’s easier to admire things.  For instance, the Nyatapola Temple, one of the tallest in Nepal, where bamboo scaffolding is going up so that the grass can be cleared from its tile roof.  Or perpendicular to it, the Bhaisan Temple, a 15th c structure with a long gold vertical “stripe” running down from the roof to just above the entrance.  Or the fountain with a bronze snake on which there sits a golden lizard, the representation of a species now so rare that if you kill one, you’ll get 15 years in prison (and be reincarnated as a cockroach probably). 

Taumadhi Square

       All or most of this was built during the Malla Dynasty (1201-1779 AD), felt to be the Renaissance of culture.  This dynasty built the architecture in the Kathmandu Valley, although much of it was ruined in the extensive earthquakes in 1697.  Much of it is also found in Palan, as we saw yesterday, and right here in Bhaktapur.  Six hundred years of splendor.
       But we must head home.  On the way, we walk through Taumadhi Square, where brightly-dressed women are having a fashion shoot.  All the buildings here look regal, with a final temple (for me):  Dattatreya.  In front of it, a turtle statue, here the symbol of good luck, not long life as in China or wisdom as on Rapa Nui, where I was decreed one of the turtle people.
       After saying good-bye to Rup back at the hotel, I have an early dinner and try the local trout, which is excellent.  Then a bit of reading, and sleep.  Up early tomorrow for the Mount Everest fly-by, gods willing.