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.

Just some photos of the shrines surrounding the main stupa. There's also a big boxlike structure in back of the stupa called Shantipur. In the 5th century, a holy man named Shanti Shri sealed himself inside this building to meditate, and will only come out when Kathmandu needed him. So far I guess the city's done ok without him since he hasn't come out, but the king went in to visit him in 1658 to get his help in ending a drought. He got the help from the (quite skinny) holy man and the drought ended, but it wasn't easy. Before he got to him, he had to go through a room filled with giant bats, then another room filled with ghosts and flesh eating spirits, then a third room filled with huge snakes. For obvious reasons, Shantipur isn't open to the public.

A quick break from the temple to show you the views of the city. Kathmandu only has a half million people, which is amazing as it feels so much bigger and more crowded. It's also very polluted, a combination of old, highly polluting cars and its being in a valley, which causes the dirty air to linger.

There are several major temple complexes on the outskirts of the city, the most important of which is the Buddhist temple of Swayambhu. (It's referred to as the monkey temple by tourists for obvious reasons). The temple sits atop the highest hill in Kathmandu, so you get great, though very smoggy, views of the city as an added bonus. The temple is reached via a very long staircase up the hill. It's been a place of worship for 2000 years, so lots of smaller temples and memorials have grown around it, but pictured here is the main stupa. The somewhat creepy eyes are a manifestation of the all knowing Buddha, and are an easy way to identify Nepalese temples.

Wealthy Nepalis live in the Eastern suburbs, which are a bit more spacious than the central city. Durbar Marg is the main street in this area, which leads to the new Royal Palace. The palace was built in the 1960's, and it really shows. The overly ornate white gate at least looks royal, but I think they ran out of money when it came time to building the palace itself. That blue building with the space agey protrusions is the palace, which looks like a terrible place to live. There are many theories why the crown prince massacred the royal family here a few years ago, but I think he probably snapped from the aggressive ugliness of the palace he was to inherit. In case you're confused, no, we weren't invited to a pool party by the king, I just threw the unrelated pool picture in since it comes from the nearby Yak and Yeti hotel. This was the only normal hotel in Kathmandu for many years and is still the favorite for many travelers. The garden and pool complex at back is definitely a nice respite from the city but the hotel didn't seem very nice, just the usual business hotel.

Kathmandu has long been a mainstay of the hippie, then backpacker circuit, one of the famous 3 K's (Kuta Beach in Bali and Khao San Road in Bangkok are the others) that every backpacker worth the name hangs out at for some part of their travels. It's entirely devoted to meeting the needs of foreigners, so it's lined with shops, travel agents arranging trips to Tibet, and, most importantly, restaurants and bars. As you can see, enterprising Nepalis haven't left a single roof in Thamel go without a rooftop bar. And they do a decent approximation of hamburgers, pancakes and pizza as well. I normally eat only the local food of wherever I am, but Nepalis eat dhal, basically beans, three times a day every day, so that gets a bit tedious. So we hung out in Thamel most nights except for a very elaborate Nepali dinner at the hotel one night. It was mostly variations on the dhal theme, but the whole thing was quite elaborate and highly recommended. The other nights, it was mostly hanging out in Thamel. There weren't many tourists due to the civil war, but that just meant more fake burritos and apple pie for us!

Some more photos of Indrachowk and the old residential/market district. This is a fun, and very colourful, part of town to explore. However, I wouldn't recommend going when we did, which is the Nepali new year. New Year celebrations in Nepal seem to consist of people hanging out of their windows and dropping colored water and eggs on the passersby below. It's a bit like Songkran in Thailand, only more annoying. Once you've made it through the throngs of shoppers and dodged the aerial assault from New Year celebrants, you'll eventually get to Thamel, Kathmandu's backpacker haven.

The old residential part of Kathmandu lies to the North of Durbar Square, along the old trade route to Tibet. Today the area is packed, as the narrow streets serve as the main driving roads, but are also clogged with pedestrians and open air markets.

There's been a palace at this spot for many centuries, but the oldest part of this current building is from the mid-16th century. Succeeding rulers added turrets, new wings, and new decorating styles at whim, so it's an architectural hodgepodge. The royal family moved out over 100 years ago to a hideous complex in the newer part of town, but this palace is stil used for important ceremonies. Only one of its ten courtyards is open to tourists, pictured above.

The impressive size of the palace gives a misleading sense of the royal family's historical importance. Since the 1400's the Kathmandu Valley was divided among the king's three sons to form three competing kingdoms, Kathmandu, Patan and Baktapur (both of which you'll see later). These really all merge into one city now, to give you a sense of how tiny their "empire" really was. The rest of Nepal was divided among 45 different royal families, mostly refugee nobles from India. Three centuries later one of these tiny kingdoms managed to invade all three of the Kathmandu Valley kingdoms and establish a real Nepal for the first time, then gradually add the dozens of other tiny kingdoms outside the Valley.

Civil war among the family members immediately broke out following unification, which continued until the Ranas, a prominent military clan essentially overthrew the royal family around 1850. Then, a la Japan, they ruled as shoguns and relegated the royal family to a purely ceremonial role. The Ranas were overthrown after the second world war, but there's a secret agreement between the Ranas and the royal family to continue sharing power. The two families intermarry constantly (the queen killed by the Crown Prince was a Rana) and the Ranas continue to dominate the military and most cabinet posts. In short, it's a total mess of a political system, but it looks like all this history may not matter much as the Maoist guerillas are determined to get rid of both families, and the current much despised king is making the job easier.

OK, so this post is a layup, as the material is so easy it practically writes itself. The only complicated part is getting you to identify the Kumari Chowk, the building I'm talking about here. The large white building is some weird extension of the palace, then there's a gap and a smallish red brick building lies to the right, with some people gathered underneath. Unfortunately it's the only photo I have of the Kumari chowk because the building doesn't really stand out among the others, but the story does. Inside resides the Kumari, who is a living goddess. There are actually eleven kumaris from different cities, but the Kathmandu Kumari is the most famous. The Kumari is the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, who inhabits a long succession of specially selected Kumaris in a process going back many centuries. Confusingly, the Kumari is chosen from the Shakya clan, which is Buddhist. Only girls three to five years old are eligible, and all such girls from the Shakya clan are inspected and interviewed by a panel of elders. Any girl who has all 32 auspicious signs, such as eyelashes like a cow, a body like a banyan tree, a neck like a conch shell, is shortlisted. (Think of the selection process as an American Idol competition if it helps understand, and don't focus too much on what a three year old with a conch shell neck and banyan tree body would look like). Then the lucky girls are put in a dark room filled with severed buffalo heads, while men in scary masks jump around screaming. Any girl who remains calm during this then has to identify certain items belonging to the previous Kumari, and the winner gets to live in relative luxury as the next Kumari in her house on Durban Square, the Kumari Chowk. There she stays indoors except on a few festival days a year, the most famous of which when she bestows a special blessing on the king's forehead. You're never supposed to see her, but if you bribe the guards downstairs she may pop out of the upstairs window for a quick view. Her feet are never allowed to touch the ground, so she is carried everywhere, and she's always caked with makeup that makes JonBenet Ramsay look like an amateur. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and when she gets her period, she's tossed out and given a pension by the government and a new Kumari is chosen. It's not easy getting on with life as an ex-Kumari either, since anyone who marries her will die an early and horrible death.

By far the biggest building in the square is the old Royal Palace, and by far the most interesting story is about the Kumari Chowk, so we'll leave those for subsequent posts, and just add a few more photos of the dozens of temples and monuments filling the square. Nepal is mostly Hindu, though with a significant Buddhist minority. As Hindus, they worship an unbelievably complicated series of gods, which gives rise to an enormous number of religious buildings, each dedicated to a different god in the pantheon. And there are religious services, offerings and other ceremonies going on in most of the buildings all the time.

Durbar Square is the main Kathmandu attraction, and quite unlike anywhere else in the world. Actually it's quite similar to the main squares in other Nepalese towns as you'll see, so I'll have to modify my first claim a bit. It's a gigantic open space, where over the centuries, palaces, temples various monuments have been built haphazardly around the square, each competing to outshine the others with their otherworldly architecture. Then the remaining free space is crowded with markets, pedestrians, cows, beggars, picture snapping tourists and, unbelievably, cars. It's incredibly chaotic, and you'll want to spend all day here just soaking in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that's not that easy, as the minute you stand still you'll be surrounded by beggars and touts, but it's all part of the scene.

Nepal, March '00

Spent a little over a week in Nepal, which was a real eye opener for me. It's one of the few places on earth that I really had no preconceptions about. The trip really started from a Carlsberg Beer ad I kept seeing with a beer delivery truck parked in a (to me) totally alien environment. I decided I wanted to see the place, and eventually pegged it as Nepal, so off we went. While this may sound pretty capricious, keep in mind it's a three hour flight from Bangkok, so not exactly livin' on the edge, but for me it was pretty spontaneous.

We timed the trip pretty well. We were there while the Maoist Communist guerillas had taken over almost all the countryside, but hadn't yet encircled Kathmandu, the capital. And we were a couple years ahead of the time the crown prince took a shotgun and murdered the king and queen and almost all the rest of the royal family. The resulting civil war and the new king's dismissal of parliament and return to absolute rule was a pretty grim time to go, but it looks like the king's on the way out, democracy is back (in its usual unstable and corrupt form) and the Communists may eventually demilitarize and join (or take over) the government. Either way, as I write this in Feb '07, it looks like the best time in years to be visiting Nepal. It's still a challenging place to visit on many fronts, but well worth it as this trip remains a highlight for me.