After sleeping most of yesterday, I went to bed fully expecting to be wide-eyed all night. In fact I slept through, got up around 5:30 with the sun and the sound of Kathmandu awakening. After a shower and some breakfast I organized my gear then fell asleep until 9:30 when I was supposed to meet up with Bernie and our tour guide. I can’t believe how much I’m sleeping.
Our guide – Kshitiz Khadga – took us straight to Bouda Nath – the main Buddhist temple in Nepal. The eyes on top of the dome indicate equality while the nose indicates unity. It is a huge temple circled by many tourist shops selling all kinds of ornate metal statues, jewellery and wooden carvings. We weren’t allowed into this temple but went into a smaller one nearby where the eyes of the Buddha followed us as we walked around the room. Paintings on the walls were done by the monks trained to do these specialized works. Seven bowls of water with a flower balanced delicately on the edge of each surrounded both sides of a picture of the former monk who looked after the temple. Four pictures of lamas (including the Dalai Lama) hung on the wall on both sides of the buddha.
From here we travelled southward to Pashupati Nath through which the Bagmati River flows. This is a beautiful spot where the bodies are cremated on byres that line a section of the river. There were a number of funerals going on while we watched from the other side of the river. Male sons of the deceased were having their heads shaved. In only the Newari group of people are the women allowed to attend the funeral.
On our side of the river were a number of shrines to Shiva – the Hindu god of destruction. Hermits dressed in bright yellows and red live in and maintain the shrines, sharing the space with a number of scavenging monkeys.
Next we headed for Durbar Square in Patan. This is where one of the sons of the Ghurka king built his palace in the 17th century. The site has been designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO and is undergoing renovations to keep it from deteriorating. We ate lunch in a rooftop restaurant called Thaluja. The meal of curried vegetables was very good. After eating we toured the palace grounds and the square. This is the centre of the Newari people who are famous for their pagoda-style architecture. According to Kshitiz there are three main types of architecture to be found here – the pagoda, the dome (influenced by the moslems) and the turret style of India. He had pointed out all three at Pashupati.
It had been a pretty solid day of site-seeing so Bernie and I were ready to head back to our respective homes for a nap.
Later that evening I ended up at a wonderful sushi restaurant with seven young people – mainly students working for NGO’s.
Carly and I bowed out of a trip to a local bar to come home and finish up for the day. It is raining again (I guess that happens most nights at this time of year) and the electricity is out so I had best hit the sack before this laptop dies.
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