A Diary Extract...

We met Ranjit our first day in Bhaktapur and immediately liked him. His enthusiasm for life was infectious and he had an opinion on everything. He was desperately trying to get work as a guide so we tracked him down to accompany us on our walk to Panauti in the hope we could learn something and spend time with our new friend.

We caught the bus to Dhulikhel, stopping outside the village to buy some juicy Gorkha oranges from a roadside stall. Our guidebook said we’d need to change buses in Banepa, but Ranjit found a bus that went directly to Dhulikhel. There is a Vishnu shrine near the bus stop, simply a small rock in a banyan tree. I am still captivated by these small jewels. A road leads up to a field at the top of the town where a group of kids hone their soccer skills and we stop to admire a Himalaya panorama. Almost as good as the view from Nargarkot where we were a couple of nights ago – and nowhere near as cold.

Dhulikhel has some wonderful little temples in the old western part of town, many of them surrounded by atmospheric, crumbling Newari buildings and we explore for a while before Ranjit helps us find the trailhead to Panauti.

We head downhill through terraced fields, crossing streams and passing through small villages. There are postcard views; sometimes the Himalaya would appear over the rice fields, other times the terraces would rise to meet thickly forested ridges. We stopped at the home of a man who was cooking his rice and vegetable lunch, exploring his village while he finished cooking, then washed out his only saucepan so he could make us chaiya at 3 rupees a glass. The children of the village congregated, fascinated by our presence, and we soon had them engaged in a friendly soccer game.

After a couple of hours we found the Pungamati River, following it into Panauti where it meets the Roshi Khola River and a group of fascinating temples, one of them, the Indreshwar Mahadev Temple, being (probably) the oldest in Nepal.

A cremation was in progress at a ghat on the river bank. It was a boy of fifteen, but we didn’t find out how he died. The funeral pyre smoked as men gambled nearby. Across the river a fight broke out between two drunks and was broken up by a woman wielding a cane basket, repeatedly pounding it on their heads. Another woman washed a buffalo as ducks paddled in the shallows. Two more women washed clothes on the rocks while their children swam.

Life goes on...