As you already know, the Kathmandu valley was fought over for centuries by three rival kingdoms, (and it's easy to guess which one won by the name of the valley). We also visited the loser cities, which I'll talk about later, but there are also lots of temples scattered around the valley outside these former capitals. This introduction makes it sound like we trekked through the wilderness discovering remote archeological sites, but really the couple of scattered temples we visited were easy daytrips from Kathmandu. In fact, Pashupatinath, the enormous temple complex pictured here, is a short walk from our hotel and runs up against the airport, so we were hardly Indiana Jones and Lara Croft.

Pashupatinath is Nepal's holiest Hindu sight, a huge sprawl of temples built along the Bagmati River, Nepal's holiest river and the equivalent of India's Ganges. The most famous temple pictured here is the Pashupati Mandir, a shrine to the Hindu god of destruction. The Hindu pantheon of gods is incredibly complex and way beyond my understanding, and I also know that equating Shiva with destruction is too simplistic, but, hey I'm a simple guy. Anyway, he's also associated with the linga, which is basically an enormous penis. Shiva's linga is housed inside the gold building you can see in the photo. The temple has been here for about 2,000 years, although this complex dates from the 17th century. It became something of a non-stop orgy over the years, so the Nepalese king brought in some strict Indian priests to restore order in the 12th century, which is still how the temple is governed. The imported priests tend to the temple, and dress and bathe the linga while the pilgrims make offerings to it. Only Hindus are allowed anywhere near the place, so these photos are about as good a picture as you can get of the place.