Bhaktapur

Andy and I were really excited to finally see Bhaktapur, we had heard rumors that it was a completely car-free town. No more dodging speeding motorcyclist on

View from Nyatapola Temple

too-small streets and climbing over the hoods of cars when the traffic is at a standstill and blocking the width of the road. We were so excited about this possibility that we decided that Bhaktapur warranted more than a day trip and after repacking our bags we were off.

You might think that after going to all of these Durbar squares around Kathmandu we might be a little tired of seeing pagoda style temples and dirty minded wood

Nyatapola Temple

carvings, but when we got to Bhaktapur we were amazed afresh. The town had five squares clustered together filled with pagoda style temples, and had a more vibrant feel than any other town we’d been to in the valley. One square in particular housed a really neat looking temple named Nyatapola. It is an amazing five tiered pagoda, the tallest one in the Kathmandu Valley, and has steps guarded by two wrestlers, two elephants, two lions, two griffins, and finally the tiger and lion goddesses at the top of the steps. We were lied to, however. The person that thought to market Bhaktapur as a car-free town was a genius, I bet we aren’t the only tourists that have gotten overly excited with hope. There were definitely less cars but we had to jump out of the way of more than one speeding motorcycle, and there were a few motorcycle parades that backed up some of the major streets.

We spent a lot of time getting lost in courtyards where we would come across locals slowly separating the rice grains they had grown from the straw it was attached to with wicker sieves. On one of these walks Andy stopped at a small barber’s shack where he had decided to get a hair cut and shave. These barber shops are men only territory so I sat outside and gambled a few rupees away with some children. When Andy finally walked out of the shop a good half an hour later I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong by taking one look at his sad face. The barber had actually shaved off part of his hair in the back so you could see his white scalp which had never before seen the light of day. He also ended up with what Andy calls the ‘Friar Tuck’ style bangs. Hilarious? Yes! Now he wont get a haircut without me there to supervise.

On top of Bhaktapur being just a beautiful town in general, there was the excitement of Diwali in the air that made it feel even more magical. Diwali is a Hindu holiday

Singing for money on Diwali.

that was described to us by a Nepali as the ‘Nepali Christmas’. To us it seemed more like a cross in between Christmas, the Fourth of July, and Halloween. During the day local businesses and homes had all drawn bright red lines leading from the road into their homes so that while Laxmi (the goddess of wealth) was cruising the streets she would see the red lines and not miss that particular home. After the sunset most people had their electric lights turned off and lit long lines of candles instead. At this point the children started to roam the streets in hordes carrying wicker baskets with a picture of Laxmi going door to door asking for money. Some of the groups would perform dances and songs for money and one group of boys threatened us with Laxmi’s wrath if we didn’t give them more money. When we wandered into one of the squares we came across some kind of weird child mob straight out of Lord of the Flies. Some older kids were lighting off fireworks and throwing them into the crowd where the younger kids would surround the sparks where they would start yelling and jumping around like Homo erectus discovering fire. Each time a new firework was lit the kids got even more wild and eventually they started kicking these things around and aimed one at us. We decided to retreat to the safety of another square before we lost any limbs.

Another thing that Bhaktapur is famous for is its King Curd which is a thick and creamy sweetened curd. You can tell just how delicious it is by the fact that when we got on the bus to leave town a large majority of people getting on each had a curd in it’s clay pot wrapped in a plastic bag and stowed in the overhead compartment. We would have taken some with us too, if we had an icebox.

Bouddhanath

Holy crap that's huge!

Something everyone who visits Kathmandu should do is take the short bus ride to Bouddhanath stupa. It is one of the largest stupas in the world, and at about 120 ft in height and about 300 ft in diameter it is definitely the largest one in Nepal.  A stupa (or chorten) is a mound created by buddhists to help worship the Lord Buddah by commemorating an event or marking a holy spot.  They can range a great deal in size but all have a similar look and many house some sort of religious relic in the base.

Andy and I had seen many stupas in Laddakh and we were always very impressed by the structures, but when we saw this bohemouth we were

Yes, those are buildings in the background.

awestruck.  Upon entering the courtyard of the stupa we immediately had to tilt our heads completely back to be able to see the tall yellow spire on top and the large painted Buddha eyes looking down at us.  There were long strands of prayer flags stretching from the spire to various points on buildings across the courtyard and all around the enormous base were hundreds of prayer wheels that Buddhists were constantly spinning clockwise as they simultaneously walked in a circle clockwise around the stupa.  There were also steps leading up the stupa so that people could actually stand on the huge base and be even in height with the second stories of the surrounding restaurants.

Buddhist monks.

It was a really neat experience to join the mass of people circling the stupa and to see all of their methods of prayer.  Some people were very serious while others talked with one another, and some people meandered slowly while others were almost running. The afternoon we spent at Bouddhanath stupa went by too fast and made us wish that we had more time to spend looking around the maze-like streets in the surrounding area, but after the sun went down we hopped on a bus and headed back to Thamel.

Patan

When Andy and I set off on our travels we knew that we would get to experience many different things regarding religion, but we never thought that we would ever be in the same building as a living goddess.

Patan's Durbar Square

The Royal Kumari is a living goddess in Patan, and as a manifestation of the Hindu goddess Durga she is worshiped by Hindus and Nepali Buddhists.  The potential toddler-aged goddesses must meet many different requirements, such as never having lost a tooth and being in excellent health, before they are narrowed down to a select group and are then put through a variety of tests until the real goddess is chosen.  Once the priests find their goddess the final test is to put her alone into a room with the heads of a bunch of ritually slaughtered animals that are illuminated by candle light to spend the night.  If she gets scared the hunt for a new goddess begins afresh.  If she isn’t frightened she lives as a goddess in a building along Patan’s Durbar Square until she has her first period which supposedly causes Durga to leave her body.  Man, this religion stuff can get confusing.  Andy and I were only allowed as far as her courtyard, but that’s closer to a goddess than I ever thought I would be in my lifetime.

After leaving the goddess’ abode we wandered around Durbar Square where we spent time looking at the pagoda style temples and spent even more time looking at all of the intricate wood carvings that adorned each temple.  Patan is a very artistic city and renowned for it’s multitude of wood carvers and metal workers who are commissioned throughout Nepal to create a wide variety of religious art.  On the streets surrounding the square there were many shops packed with art of all kinds, but since we were a little limited on room we only window shopped.

Patan has a really comprehensive museum where we got to see exactly how the traditional metal work is done by viewing a statue in various stages of creation.  It looked like a pretty time consuming deal, but the final product was amazing and can only be made in that particular traditional way.  The museum also had exhibitions on Buddhist art and Hindu art which helped answer some of our questions about the religions and different deities, but somehow having those questions answered created even more questions and left me in the same state of confusion I was at the beginning.  We decided to celebrate our museum trip with an apple pie Ala mode and two filter coffees in the garden cafe.  Having not had either of those things in quite a while it was almost as memorable as the museum exhibits themselves and well worth the jacked up price.

After another lap around Durbar Square it was back to Kathmandu.

Dhulikhel

After a few nights in the noisy Thamel area spent dodging traffic and saying no to Tiger Balm and hashish sales men we figured it was time to get above the smoggy pollution to see some of Nepal’s famed mountains. After wandering the busy Kathmandu streets we found the bus station, with the help of a local, and headed for the Newari town of Dhulikhel where we had heard there were some amazing mountain views.
The views from the bus of the lush green farm land and the hundreds of terraces were so amazing that we could momentarily forget about being crammed like sardines into our own metal packaging. We were quickly brought back to reality when the bus stopped short of our destination and everyone was told to get off; it was the end of the line. As we watched our bus head away back towards Kathmandu we realized that we still had about 10 kilometers left to go and the bus had turned around because of a transit strike. There was a large group of protesters, and looking around we wondered if we had made the right decision in coming to Dhulikhel. With no other buses, and being most of the way there anyway, we decided, “What the heck, lets just go for.” and started making our way through the crowd.
We were soon approached by a couple of young men who wondered if we would like to pay a few Nepali rupees to be taken up the road about two thirds of the way in their bike trailer. We, of course, agreed and hopped in back with two other people and our backpacks. Once the bike started moving we realized that he was taking us through the down hill section, and there were parts of that ride we were moving so fast that I was afraid a wheel was going to fall off. I really can’t tell you much more about that experience since my subconscious blocked it out from some kind of fear reflex, but everyone survived and we were a little closer to our destination. Turning down an offer for a ride on the back of a motorcycle, we decided to walk the rest of the way and arrived shortly.

Terraced farming near Dhulikhel.

We stayed at a nice little family run guest house on the far edge of town where we had mountain views from our windows and there was only one other guest. The lodge owner had his own version of the sad story so many people who rely on the tourist trade have; not enough foreigners. He said that the foreigners were scared off because of the recent change in government and the related uprisings, and that the transit strike was keeping people specifically from Dhulikhel. We then found out the reason for the transit strike and it helped us understand why maybe the foreigners were staying away.

A bus driver was asked to do a freight run, as I guess they commonly do in Nepal, where he was to take some milk to a particular destination and not pick up any passengers along the way. While he was doing this errand he was flagged down by some Maoists associated with the government who demanded to be taken where ever they were planning on going. When the bus driver refused to take them, since he had his milk run to complete, the Maoists beat him to death. The locals decided to go on strike until the widow was compensated with about the equivalent of a few thousand dollars and the offenders were prosecuted.

The second night we spent there I woke up with a head ache and cold sweats and what was probably a pretty high fever. After a sleepless night Andy decided that it would be prudent for me to have a Malaria test since we had spent time in a Malarial zone with out taking our medication and only using DEET as a preventative from mosquitoes. The lodge owner had told us about the local hospital and how there were foreigners working there, thinking that we might want to make some friends or something, so Andy found out where it was and dragged my weak, light headed ass across town to have my blood tested. When we saw the hospital we were pleasantly surprised; it was huge and looked brand new. This was a major stroke of luck since the transit strike had spread to the entire valley and there were no buses heading back to Kathmandu. The only way we could get back would be by calling a taxi from Kathmandu and paying an exorbitant amount of rupees to the taxi drivers who were scared of having major damage done to their vehicles, and possibly their persons, when they passed through the mobs of strikers.

It was a hospital that catered to the locals and I ended up having a check up from a doctor, a white blood cell count, and a Malaria test all for about three

"Chocolate? Pen?"

dollars. The facilities were wonderful and the doctor spoke excellent English, the only difference was that all the lab techs were wearing flip flops. After you have any kind of work done the hospital gives you your test results and information to carry around for the next doctor you encounter, whether it be there or in a different town. It was a great experience and made me really glad that there is that kind of care for the locals in semi-rural Nepal.

Malaria free, Andy and I spent the next few days trapped by the strike in Dhulikhel. We couldn’t have asked for a better place to recoup. The town had a few neat little temples and the locals were so friendly and nice. As we aimlessly wandered the back streets children were constantly asking us to take their photo and as soon as we would snap their poses they would run over to look at the photo. They’d obviously been exposed to tourists before because everyone of them demanded pens and chocolate, neither of which we had. We enjoyed the laid-back feel and spent time reading in our room with a view, but it was a small town and we were ready to head on when the strike lifted.