The main road continues cutting through the old town, past a smaller square called Potters Square, which isn't worth the detour so I'll spare you the photos, and ends at Tachapol Tol. This lively center contains the oldest temples in the city, as well as many well-preserved residential buildings. One such building supposedly has the best carved wooden window in Nepal, but you'd have to be a pretty dedicated tourist after a week of templeviewing to pick it out.

The first square from Durbar Square is Taumadhi Tol, which houses two very different pagodas, the squat Bhairabnath Mandir and the slender Nyatapola, the tallest pagoda in Nepal. Nyatapola was built in 1702 to worship the very minor Hindu goddess. Unfortunately she was so important that she no longer has any worshippers, so it's no longer visited by anyone. The huge stone sculptures guarding the shrine's entrance are as much an attraction as the pagoda itself. The short temple houses a tiny image of another god, Bhairab. Each new year, the two halves of the city engage in a huge tug of war in which the idol is placed on an enormous chariot (you can see some of the wheels in the picture below Sunny Restaurant). They then spend three days trying to tug the chariot into their part of town. In an odd twist, Bhairab is said to have visited the festival once, traveling in disguise. The priests detected his holy aura and decided they wanted to keep him as a source of good luck. He tried to run away but the priests pinned him down and chopped off his head, so at least the head stayed in the city. Not sure how to turn priests chopping a god's head off into an instructive religious moral...

The main reason for Durbar Square's underperformance is that, unlike other cities, it doesn't put all its eggs in one basket. It's got three main squares to explore, connected by a main thoroughfare that serves as the main market as well. The medieval alleys and streets of the city all feed into this main street, and make a great place for wandering, particularly since there are no cars.

Bhaktapur's Durbar Square isn't really up to much. It's of course host to the royal palace, that wall of buildings in the photo, which is now the National Art Gallery. The Golden Gate, pictured but ignored in the previous post, is part of the palace compound, and one of Nepal's most famous artworks. The rest of the square contains the usual assortment of shrines and temples, but overall it lacks the architechtural fireworks of its competitors. It also isn't much used by locals, as it sits at one end of the city rather than the traditional center.

41. Bhaktapur

Our last stop in Kathmandu Valley was the slightly more remote Bhaktapur. Because it's away from the Kathmandu-Tibet trade routes, Bhaktapur remained more purely Hindu, and also more conservative, than its two rivals. It's also the best preserved, with a relatively organized local government banning cars for most of the day, and enforcing strict preservation codes, so it's a more attractive city to explore. Although it shares my loser city title with Patan, in fact in the convoluted history of this little valley, it was usually the winner. It was Bakhtapur's Malla dynasty that united the valley the first time in 1200, then ruled it for three centuries until a softhearted king divided the place up again among his three sons. This set up the following three centuries of warfare among the related and neighboring kingdoms, until finally, in the 1700's, Bakhtapur called for help from some allies in the mountains, who came and conquered Patan and Kathmandu. Unfortunately for Bakhtapur, they didn't stop there, and kept on conquering until they swallowed up Bakhtapur as well, then chose Kathmandu as their new capital. I think I've told a variation of this story each time I've introduced one of the cities, but in a different way, so it's probably completely confused at this stage. But take comfort in the fact that the details of Kathmandu Valley's history will probably not have a huge impact on most of you.