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.

Some more photos of this part of Durbar Square. The man at the top of the pillar is an old king of Patan, who left the throne to become a hermit. If you have extremely good eyes, you'll see that there's a bird on top of the cobra that's protecting the king. The king told his people that so long as the bird is still there, his people will know he's still alive. For that reason, they still prepare a room and a meal for the king in the nearby palace in case he should happen to return from his many centuries of doing whatever a hermit does. The seventeenth century multi-arched Krishna mandir really stands out from the crowd, and is apparently filled with equally elaborate artwork inside, but it's closed to non-Hindus. When we were there it seemed like a party was going on upstairs with scenes straight out of Bollywood.