Kathmandu’s Medieval Wonders

Durbar Square – the Royal Quarters host the Indra Jatra Festival and are a feast in any other day of the year as well. Its medieval ambience was kept even after the reconstruction that followed the 1933 earthquake. Some of its most interesting sights are open to the public only during that event.

Boudhanat – one of the largest stupas in the world offers one of the best known sights and a look into the life of the Tibetan refugees life in Nepal. Patan – a city across the Bagmati River from Kathmandu, just 5km away from its center, offers a much richer Durbar Square than its bigger sister.

Bhaktapur – the third largest town in the valley has the best Durbar Square of the three, with the biggest pagodas in the country.

Thamel – the backpackers’ center of Kathmandu is a sight in itself; it is about a 20-minute walk north of Durbar Square and has a unique ambience. The place is an excellent shopping center for your trekking gear and used books, as well as offers food in adapted styles from around the world.

Quick Tips:

September to November, the start of the dry season, is the best time of year for a visit since the climate is the most comfortable. Contributing to the selection of this timing is the Indra Jatra Festival – in September – that offers the most incredible spectacle. While in Thamel, shop around; there is a huge variety of deals for every product, especially in the shops away from its main axis. This is particularly true in the case of guesthouses and hotels; the best strategy would be to rest a little after your arrival to the area – a fresh mango juice may do the trick – and then start a serious survey before choosing a place.

Best Way To Get Around:

Arriving to Kathmandu by air is very economical from Bangkok; return tickets are sold there for around . Otherwise, India makes a good entry point by air and by bus. If you enter by bus, consider stopping at the Chitwan National Park before getting to the capital. Internal flights are available to Lukla, for the Everest Trek, and to Pokhara for the Annapouna Trek. Sightseeing flights to the Everest and back are available from the tourism agencies in Thamel. Tours to mysterious Bhutan can be bought – at a substantial price – and with the limitation that the entry or the exit from that country must be done through air. Hence, flying there from Kathmandu and leaving by bus to India is a reasonable choice.

On a more local level, small buses span the 14km to Bhaktapur (10NPR), but the Thai-style tuk-tuks will take you in a more private fashion (250NRP). The town itself is small, and it is actually faster to walk along its narrow alleys than to try to use the various tuk-tuks and rickshaws available as local transport.

The True Base Camp

Many visit Nepal for the sake of trekking or climbing. Few countries offer a better infrastructure; none offers higher mountains. Among the various areas available for such activities, the Sagarmatha Park is the most prestigious due to the simple fact it houses the highest mountain on earth. Few of the park visitors plan reaching its summit; most of them just want to reach Kalla Pattar or the adjacent Everest Base Camp. Mount Everest is so high that its base camp is higher than most mountains.

Under such uncommon reality, the name Base Camp is misleading. The true base camp all trekkers and climbers have in common is much lower, in Kathmandu, to be more specific, in Thamel.

Cultural Shock

Cultural shock means more than arriving at a place where the language and letters used for writing it are unknown; nowadays, most relevant signs are at least bilingual. Cultural shock means walking in a narrow street without sidewalks and suddenly finding it blocked by an apathetic cow. It means following a whiff of incense for its source, only to find the whole place smells of it. It means that technically you could read the bilingual signs, but that a myriad of them compete for your attention, blocking each other and the view of the wonderful Newari carved windows. Cultural shock means spotting a monkey intently looking at your snack from one of the partially seen windows. It means Thamel.

Is Thamel Shangri-La?

My main concern while planning the visit to Beijing's Purple Forbidden City was getting trapped amidst a million visitors and unable to enjoy the place. The planned strategy was simple: arriving early in the morning and then rushing to the main sights, while keeping those next to the entrance for the end. This seemed to be a foolproof plan.

Next day I bought a ticket and run into the forbidden grounds. I crossed a typical Chinese gate and saw another one ahead of me; "First the palace," I told myself and run through the second gate. And through the third one. At the fifth one I became worried but kept pushing forward; funky designed gates could not stop me now. Having reached the Imperial Garden at the northern edge of the compound, I finally got the message: the Purple Forbidden City was designed a series of gates with nothing that could be defined as a European style palace at the compound's center.

I retraced my steps until I reached the emperor's quarters and took a close look. The most astounding part of his living quarters was their relative smallness and lack of facilities; he didn’t have even proper toilets. The head of the largest empire on earth didn’t live in Shangri-La. The last was elsewhere.

Thamel is definitely more crowded, and less spacious than the Purple Forbidden City, but it definitely provides a more comfortable, varied and interesting environment, and the gives the backpacker the invigorating knowledge that he enjoys better conditions than the Son of Heaven ever knew.

Where is Shangri-La?

Arriving at Kathmandu by air is very economical from Bangkok; return tickets are sold there for around 200 dollars. Otherwise, India makes a good entry point by air and by bus. If entering by bus, consider stopping at the Chitwan National Park before getting to the capital. Internal flights are available to Lukla, for the Everest Trek, and to Pokhara for the Annapouna Trek; Bhaktapur and Nagarkot are near Kathmandu allowing awesome looks into the local culture and landscape. Sightseeing flights to the Everest and back are also available from Kathmandu. Tours to mysterious Bhutan can be bought – at a substantial price – and with the limitation that the entry or the exit from that country must be done through air; hence flying there from Kathmandu and leaving by bus to India is a reasonable choice.

Despite its humble surroundings, Thamel occupies a premium spot in Kathmandu, just west of the Royal Palace, north of the Durbar Square and south of Bouddhanat.

Thamel’s layout is definitely complex; many alleys connect between the main roads, others are just dead ends. The maze is three dimensional, many establishments’ are located on upper floors; reaching them may demand from the traveler quite a substantial amount of ingenuity.

The best way of finding one’s way is relating to the central "T" junction, not far from "Himalayan Encounters;" the Kathmandu Guesthouse – one of the hotels that transformed the area into a travelers’ haven – is a few meters north of the junction. Here, the horizontal bar of the "T" is one of the two main north-to-south roads composing Thamel. The vertical line of the "T" is the short road connecting the longitudinal roads. Despite the superficial similarity to Khaosan Road in Bangkok, the visitor will soon find Thamel is vastly larger.

What’s in Shangri-La

Restaurants, guesthouses, convenience stores, travel agencies, trekking and climbing services companies, souvenirs and T-shirts stalls; on each of these categories Thamel provides an incredible variety of options. It may seem unappealing, but this eclectic reality is a powerful magnet even for the most resilient snobs.

The road is spectacular. Here, travelers can settle down and still live under the illusion they are moving fast across vast distances. A face from a different corner of the planet appears every few meters; sounds in different languages create destructive interferences among the sound waves and mimic a modern Babel Tower. Nobody completely understands his alien conversation partners and yet everything seems to function properly in a modern version of the Biblical "Speaking in Tongues."

Such diversity is irresistible for most travelers; few other places provide the opportunity to imagine he is everywhere – and nowhere – at once. The more a traveler stays here, the better he realizes he had hardly scratched the surface of this complex place. Many – nobody knows the exact number – cultures coexist there in perfect harmony showing thus that such a reality is a feasible future.

Western Food and Coffee Shops

There are literally hundreds of restaurants and coffee shops serving hybrid Nepali-Western dishes and among them a few coffee shops and restaurants attempting to be faithful to the originals. The danger of food poisoning – especially due to polluted water – in Nepal is real, thus cheap joints are better avoided, and asking if boiled water is used in the food preparation is recommended before taking a seat. "Tashi Delek" – next to the main junction - turned out being a friendly Tibetan restaurant serving many of the dishes I found later on the Everest slopes.

Bookstores

Thamel houses a significant number of second-hand English bookstores – definitely more than Khaosan Road in Bangkok – and is the recommended place for stocking up and exchanging these oddities. The usual deals offered are "two-for-one" or "one-for-one-plus-an-exchange-fee." Prices depend on the books quality and conditions.

As always in Asia, names should be taken with a pinch of salt, pepper and copious amounts of chili. The "Barnes and Noble Book House" in Thamel is a good example of that.

Travel Agencies, Climbing and Trekking Equipment

Despite the ubiquitous travel agencies offering special treks and climbing expeditions, the trekker should remember that trekking is basically an independent activity and that the Nepali teahouses scattered along all the main routes make the activity an easy and friendly one. However anything classified as "Trekking Peak" and upwards demands special permits and local guides. That’s when the agencies become handy.

Many of the shops in the area sell equipment related to climbing and trekking. They can be easily categorized into those selling inexpensive equipment produced in Nepal or in nearby China and those selling equipment brought from Europe – mainly from Germany. The merchandise in the last is substantially more expensive than in Europe, while the merchandise sold in the first would barely last one trek.

Souvenirs

Newari carved windows are wonderful, but difficult to take home as souvenirs. Gurkha swords are equally interesting, but probably the traveler would face certain difficulties at the airport. Buddha statues are interesting but essentially similar to those found elsewhere in Asia. Luckily, Thamel has more than that to offer. What Thamel really excels in are thanka paintings.

These painted Buddhist banners originated in Tibet and are used in Buddhist monasteries or in home-altars as a worshipping or studying medium. Most of them are rectangular and can be scrolled. The most popular motifs depicted in them are the Life of Buddha and the Wheel of Life. Theologically, they are related to Mahayana and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism (and thus cannot be found in countries like Thailand, since its people practice Theravada – also called Hinayana - Buddhism). Even for the non-Buddhist traveler, thankas are fascinating works of art, with extraordinarily rich images and vivid colors which sometimes include gold in their preparation.

Nepal offer many festivals during the year in a kaleidoscope created by its different ethnic groups that have each kept its traditions. The most colorful one is Indra Jatra, which occurs in late September. The central event takes place in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, which is completely packed; to get a good place, you should arrive a couple of hours earlier.

It is a celebration of various events that coincide in date. The event giving its name to the festival is the release of Indra from its captivity. Indra was the ancient Aryan god of rain who was allegedly captured in the valley by its inhabitants while searching for flowers. His mother, Dagini, rescued him with promises of heaven to the captors. This legend marks the transition from the rainy monsoon season to the fine months and gives a strong hint regarding how to plan your trip to Nepal. The short autumn following the monsoon is the best season for trekking; I began my trek there the day following Indra Jatra. A second reason for the festival is giving homage to Bahirab, which is a manifestation of Shiva as the destroyer of human ignorance and evil.

The impressive Seto (White) Bahirab face statue, in the northern outskirts of the square, is open only 3 days each year during the festival. For the joy of the locals, free beer flows from a tube emerging from its mouth in the evening of the first festival day. Kumari, the girl goddess, appears in an adorned chariot, with which she travels to the old palace and the old city. She is forbidden to touch the ground. Hence all her movements are somewhat cumbersome, and servants carry the little girl on their hands whenever she needs to move. Before the main event in the afternoon, you can visit her palace by the square’s main entrance at its southern side. The living quarters are closed but the inner yard is a masterpiece of Newari woodcarving.

The third event commemorated is the conquest of the valley by Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1768. Unlike other festivals in the country, this one has a central event in which the king participates from the old palace on the eastern part of the square. Kumari salutes the king from her chariot and a ritual dance of the god Kali, in which he fights an elephant, takes place just below the king’s balcony. The setup of the event within that fabulous medieval square, among the colorful temples, the surreal chariot and the goddess on it, the red-haired Kali and the cloth elephant, creates a fantastic sight that will not fade from your memory in the years to come.

Nagarkot is to Kathmandu what Sarangkot is to Pokhara, the closest place to the city from where you can see the whole range of mountains surrounding it. The village is at 2,200m and offers good views of the Langtang Range of the Himalayas, just to the north. The highest peaks there are the Langtang Liru (7,245m) and the Lunpo Lang (7,064m), and the area is the third most popular trekking site in Nepal. Everest can be seen in the northeast, but you will need an exceptionally clear day for that. If you arrived to Nepal overnight or from an angle in which the mountains were obstructed, a visit to Nagarkot will give you the drive needed to leave a comfortable guesthouse for a demanding trek.

To reach it is simple; the best is to travel first to Bhaktapur (see that entry in this journal) and then to take one of the buses climbing the rest of the narrow and steep way (20NRP for the way up and 12NRP while descending). Bhaktapur’s bus terminal is small, and finding the right bus is no trouble.

Nagarkot is a vacation resort, and all of its small population is dedicated to the tourism industry; few of its buildings are private, and almost each one of them hosts a guesthouse or a restaurant. Accordingly, the prices are roughly threefold those of Kathmandu, but considering that the stays here are limited in time, this is a secondary issue. The steep topography of Nagarkot creates unforgettable sights; in Gantabya, the restaurant at the entrance of the village, you can see the tops of grown-up pines just centimeters away from the window of the ground floor.

Nagarkot exhibits a strong version of a Nepali climate characteristic: huge quantities of dew accumulate on the ground during the night and evaporate in the early hours of the morning, creating a fog that hides the mountains. Hence, to get a crystal-clear sight of the Himalayas, you should stay in the village overnight.

The surrounding area is not an attractive trekking place, unless you are interested in wandering around Kathmandu Valley's plains, and its terrain is different from the one in the more popular trekking areas; thus it is not an ideal location for checking your walking equipment. Yet in the hyperactive Nepali reality, Nagarkot is the perfect place for a relaxed weekend watching mountains.

Patan, or Lalitpur as it is usually called, is the second-largest city in the valley and lies just across the Bagmati River from Kathmandu. The town is much quieter, and its main sights can be covered in an easy day's walk. It is located just 5km south from Thamel, and you can reach it by bicycle, taxi, bus, tuk-tuk, or foot. The last option is the most appealing, since along the way are many attractions you will cross: Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, colorful temples, and nice local coffee shops.

The main attraction of Lalitpur is its Durbar Square; wise planning will allow a very early visit there, because later in the morning, the place crowds up. The square has the major display of Newari woodcarving-architecture in Nepal and includes the Royal Palace and two-tiered brick Jagannarayan Temple; just below the roofs are carvings of very active couples. The Patan Museum is located there as well, but as usual in Nepal, the building is more interesting than its collection.

North of the square is the Golden Temple, a Buddhist monastery watched over by tortoises and the Kumbeshawar, the oldest temple in Patan (1392). South of the square is Mangal Bazaar, an area of narrow streets lined with many of the artisans the town is so proud of.

Four stupas delimit the historical city, and they are called the northern, estern, southern, and western stupas. Finding them is a little tedious: the eastern one is on the very outskirts, the western and the southern are within densely constructed areas (the last is very close to the bus terminal), and the northern one is off the way to Kathmandu, just before a secondary bridge.

Lalitpur has a small zoo in its eastern part, but if you just came back from the Chitwan National Park, you can skip it in favor of Jawalalkhel, a huge Tibetan Refugee Centre just south of the zoo. There you can buy colorful carpets and help in their precarious economy.

On your way back to Kathmandu, give some attention to the Bagmati River. It is shallow and wide and its rocky riverbed and riverside does not invite for a splash or a picnic, but you may spot cremation rites performed by the local Nepali/Hindu population within an adjacent temple in its northern shore. Unless you are Hindu, your participation or even visit to the site is not allowed, hence a camera with a good zoom is recommended.

The third largest town in the Kathmandu Valley is 14km southeast from the capital and has the best Durbar Squre, and the best-conserved temples, the most beautiful stone-monsters, the highest pagodas in the country, and the highest entry fee as well – that is, if you are not local. The fee is roughly five times higher than in Kathmandu or Patan, and it equals a local month's salary. I understand that there are different views in the issue of discriminating between tourists and locals, and I will not use this space for a debate on the subject: I just will describe a legal way of seeing the wonders without paying the fee.

Reaching the town is easy. From the Clock Tower in downtown Kathmandu, there are frequent buses that cost 10NRP, or you can take a tuk-tuk there for 250 to 300NRP. The buses terminal in Bhaktapur is outside the area enclosed for tourists, and that is very convenient for finding a guesthouse. The Nepali authorities separated the medieval center of the town from the rest of the city, and tourists willing to enter there between 8am and 6pm need to pay an entrance fee of 1000NRP, the same amount you pay for a 1-month permit for trekking in the Everest area. The regular tourists’ guesthouses and hotels are all within that area, and thus most visitors surrender to the imposed policy without thinking twice. However, there is another choice. Hotels and guesthouses catering for locals will happily accept you, and they are scattered all over the place. Many restaurants are the front of these, and you can ask while eating a tasty local dish. Maybe they are of lower quality of the guesthouses in the center, but they are better than most options you find during a trek in Nepal. For the night or two you will spend here, they are perfect – and you will be directly contributing to the economy of local people: the guesthouses in the centre belong usually to government officers from Kathmandu.

The best thing of such a strategy is that it will leave the medieval parts of the city open to you before 8am and after 6pm. Before 8am, you will have the town for yourself: the crowded temples that hosts thousands of tourists during the day, will provide, at this hour, beautiful, unobstructed pictures. From sunrise until the official opening, you will have a couple of hours, more than enough for visiting the whole site. After 6pm, you can join the crowds in the colorful night markets of the place.

The 10 hours in between are not wasted; you can used them for a visit to Nagarkot (see separate entry) or to wander around the other parts of the town. Bhaktapur is the main center for artisans in the valley, and the tortured alleys of its outskirts hide wonderful sights.

The centre includes three main areas of interest:

Durbar Square

This Durbar Square is much larger than Kathmandu's, and despite the 1934 earthquake, it still has many temples. Just inside the gate on the left, the multi-armed couple Bhairab and Ugrachandi guard another gate, and legend tells that after the sculptor completed them in 1701, his hands were cut off to prevent him from creating masterpieces elsewhere. To the right is a cluster of temples, the largest of which is dedicated to Krishna. The Royal Palace encloses the north side of the square, and like the square itself, it is only a fraction of what it once was. Its west wing houses the National Art Gallery, which displays Newari Paubha and Tibetan Thanka paintings. Next door is the acclaimed Garuda-topped Golden Gate, which was built in the early 18th century by King Bhupatindra Malla, who in golden form himself kneels atop a stone pillar facing the gate. A guard blocks foreigners from entering, but there is plenty to admire from outside the Fifty-Five Windows Palace. Behind the king's pillar is the elephant-flanked stone Vatsala Durga Temple, built in the mid-18th century in the shikhara style.

The small bell next to it is known as the Bell of the Barking Dogs, whose peal is said to make dogs howl. The larger Taleju Bell was used to call humans to prayer. The next temple is the Chyasilin Mandapa, or Octagonal Pavilion, which is a 1990 reconstruction incorporating fragments of the 18th-century original. In the eastern section of the square, around the corner of the palace, are several more temples and temples foundations, the most interesting of which is the 17th-century stone Siddhi Lakshmi Temple, with its procession of animals and people on either side of the stairs. The souvenir shops that surround this part of the square were once dharamshalas (pilgrims' rest houses). In a courtyard to the right, off the far end of the square, is Tadhunchen Bahal, a 15th-century monastery, holy for both Hindus and Buddhists. Back in the southeast corner of the main part of the square, the Pashupatinath Mandir contains a 17th-century reproduction of the linga at Pashupatinath and is the most active of the square temples. Pay attention to the creative couples’ sculpted on the roof struts.

Taumadhi Tole

Taumadhi Tole is a secondary square that features Nyatapola, the highest temple in Nepal, and Til Mahadev Narayan, an important place of pilgrimage. It is connected to Durbar Square by a short shop-lined street. The red five-story pagoda of Nyatapola was built in 1702. Five pairs of stone creatures flank the stairs to the temple. Each pair of guardians is said to be ten times stronger than the one below, starting with a tremendous pair of Malla wrestlers, who themselves are ten times more powerful than the average man. Next are a pair of elephants, followed by lions, giraffes, and finally the goddesses Bahini (the Tigress) and Singhini (the Lioness). The image of the goddess Siddhi Lakshmi, to whom the temple is devoted, is locked inside the temple, accessible only to priests. The eastern side of the square is dominated by the comparably solid Bhairabnath Mandir, which was built as a single story temple in the 17th century. A second story was added during the 18th century, and the entire temple was rebuilt with the existing three stories after the 1934 earthquake. The golden image of Bhairab is miniscule in proportion to the temple as a whole. A doorway in the building at the south side of the square leads to a courtyard filled by the Til Mahadev Narayan Mandir, a 17th-century temple (on an 11th-century temple site) reminiscent of Changu Narayan with its pillar-mounted golden Garuda, chakra, and sankha. Til means "sesame seed," and its use in the temple's name is said to have come from a Thimi merchant who had a vision of Narayan in his stock of sesame seeds. Nearby is Potters' Square, where thousands of clay pots are made and sold.

Tachapal Tole

East from there, a wide, curving street of shops catering to locals links Taumadhi Tole to Tachapal Tole. The oldest square in Bhaktapur is also known as Dattratraya Square. Dattratraya is considered an incarnation of Vishnu, a guru of Shiva and a cousin of the Buddha. The wooden buildings in the square were once maths, residences for priests. The Dattratraya Mandir presides over the square from the eastern end. Built in 1427, it is the oldest surviving building in Bhaktapur and, like other famous structures in the valley, is said to have been built with the wood of just one tree. A pair of colorful Malla wrestlers guards the entrance, creating a contrast to the temple, whose beauty lies in its detailed woodcarvings. A Garuda faces the temple from the top of a stone pillar. At the opposite end of the square is the rectangular Bhimsen Temple, which honors the favorite god of Newari merchants. The ground floor of the temple is open for business, while the shrine is upstairs. Behind the Dattratraya temple are two museums housed in maths. To the left, the Brass and Bronze Museum displays a collection of functional objects such as lamps, cooking pots, hookahs, spittoons, and ritual paraphernalia. Opposite in Pujari Math is the National Art Gallery Woodcarving Museum, worth visiting more for its magnificent courtyard than for its artifacts. Around the corner, on another side of Pujari Math, is the famous Peacock window, which is supposed to be the pinnacle of Bhaktapur woodcarving.