Memories of Nepal (Part 1, Day 1)

Golden Temple, Patan Durbar Square, Nepal

Nestling in the Kathmandu valley, the city of Kathmandu, named after the Kasthamandapa edifice in the Durbar Square of Kathmandu, was our first destination at the exordia of our four days and three nights trip to Nepal. Having disembarked at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on a cloud-veiled morning, we found ourselves warmly greeted by the brass-golden statuette of the mythical humanoid bird Garuda. Apterous though I am, I couldn’t but appreciate the magnificent charm of the gleaming wings of the mythical bird statue. He stood next to the main entrance of the arrival-terminal with his hands folded, his right knee touching the ground, his eyes closed in reverence, and an expression of utter peace on his face. Behind him the word welcome was written in different languages and together offered a great photogenic point for the visitors. 

Welcome to Nepal

The airport is a brick building of mediocre dimensions and struck me at first as a bus terminus rather than an international airport.  The inaugural procedure of checking visitors’ documents before they are admitted to the city outside and the collecting of luggage nevertheless was quick. Indians do not need a visa when travelling to Nepal, and thus we were spared the rigmarole of having to apply for the same before our visit. A farcical final luggage screening later, we walked out of the airport to face a city that appeared to me very much like the one yo vivo en. It too, like Delhi, was home to a series of entrepreneurs, city guides and know-alls bubbling with secret information about their country. They materialize at airports and tourist hubs with halos of cognizance around them like knight errands ready to rescue nescient travelers from all kinds of touristy trouble provided you employ their services. Having travelled extensively in all these years, I had ample opportunity to study these rampant entrepreneurs, tourist guides and hotel-employed lobbyist (speaking on a miniature scale, of course), and have found them as an eclectic bunch belonging to two broad general groups. Members of one group will push their cause till death and influence every decision you take as a tourist, like where you should stay, what you shall see in the new country, and so on; and then there are the affiliates of the latter bunch who, when they receive a cold shoulder and an ear unheeding to their sanctimonious advice on how to survive in their city, give up your cause for good and engage their attention on catching some other fly that might prove better and nobler than you. Fortunately, the general laid-back lifestyle of Nepal has rendered its men as members of the latter group; therefore, you need not worry about being incessantly abluted by the advice and suggestions of tourist guides.

From the airport, we took a pre-paid taxi to the hotel De L’ Annapurna at the Durbar Marg where we had our bookings. The initial trip through the city introduced us to its garbage littered roads, its laid-back newspaper reading people, its shops and its terrible traffic managed by traffic policemen in blue uniform, surgical facemasks and pointed hats. You will find these traffic policemen performing their ritual calisthenics with little success on small patches of roads next to traffic intersections. The traffic movement in Kathmandu is laboriously slow as its drivers, each evidently following self-penned rules of driving, come from all sides and make the job of the traffic police extremely difficult. But we, citizens of India, being well versed with dingy road conditions, slow traffic and quisquilie were pleasantly amused to see that Nepal was a virtual replica of the nation we live in, and that thought made us feel more at home there.

Located close to the popular Thamel shopping area in Kathmandu, the hotel De l’ Annapurna was a delightful place to stay. Bountifully equipped with all modern amenities, this hotel also asperses its guests with a dosage of heritage. A giant thangka gracing a sidewall of the hotel lobby was the first thing that caught my eye. The painting of the blue god Mahakala Bhairav, his eyes delivering commination, a halo of fire surrounding him as he performed his wrathful dance was breathtaking. The hotel was luxury itself with gracious, ready-to-help staff and beautiful wood paneled rooms. It turned out to be one of the best places I stayed in my life.

The Boudanath Stupa

Our official tour of the Kathmandu valley began with our visit to the Boudanath, the biggest stupa in Nepal, situated 5 km east of Kathmandu. The stupa is surrounded with prayer wheels embossed with the famous sacred chant Om Mani Padme Hum. As the pilgrims circumambulate the shrine they set the prayer wheels in motion. The stupa, looking like a mandala from above, is a token of striking Tibetan architecture consisting of three large platforms on which rests the central hemispherical structure topped with a square aureate-painted tower bearing on its four sides the ubiquitous blue eyes of Lord Buddha. This tower is crowned by another triangular pyramid like structure with thirteen steps, and above it, is a gilded circular awning that is further topped by a golden spire. Colorful rectangular prayer flags tied to the stupa set aflutter by the wind communicate the holy prayers to the deities abaft. As I stood under the piecing all-pervading gaze of the azure-eyed god, a sense of peace moistened the abditories of my heart. Om Mani Padme Hum, I heard the meta-voice inside the head chant.

The area surrounding the Boudanath is flanked with shops selling souvenirs and Buddhist religious artifacts, and tchotchkes. My first buy from one of the shops was a beautiful handheld prayer wheel and a set of prayer flags. Most shops in that location ask exorbitant price for souvenir items, so discretion is advised when buying from them. A Thanka was a third item I wished to buy from Nepal, and after scouring the shops in the neighborhood of Boudanath, I discovered the one I really wanted to have. My thanka, depicturing the Manjusri Bodhisattva, the wielder of wisdom, armed with a flaming sword that he uses to execute ignorance and duality, now illuminates a corner of my home in Delhi. It is a constant reminder of my beautiful trip to Nepal.

Our next destination was the famous Patan Durbar Square. Durbar squares are actually plazas adjacent to the ancient royal palaces of Nepal. They house temples, open courts, fountains, statues of animals and so on. There are three Durbar squares in the Kathmandu valley— Kathmandu Durbar Square, Patan Durbar Square, and Bhaktapur Durbar Square— and all of them are UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Located across the river Bagmati, the city of Patan, founded by the King Veera Dev in 3^rd century A.D. is also known as Lalitpur. It is Nepal’s city of arts and is considered the oldest of the three cities in the Kathmandu valley.

A Temple at the Patan Durbar Square

    I think I shall always remember the moment I first saw the Patan Durbar Square. It was the first of the three Durbar Squares we visited and the memory is embossed in my mind like the sacred chant of Om Mani Padme Hum on spinning prayer-wheels outside the Buddhist temples. The buildings in the Durbar Square struck me as a series of recherché monuments build by the dab hands of some supramundane agency. Each unique edifice stood erected on its own spot, each a delicate work of art, a poetic vision in reality as true as the melodious notes of the nightingale that  made Keats dedicate his ode to the bird.

The moment I stepped into the Durbar Square I felt abluted of the past; it seemed all my former indiscretions, moments of sadness and pain, all of my life’s struggles momentarily eradicated before the stern majesty of those buildings. So beautiful were they, mostly pagoda style structures with brass spires poking the sky— that I wondered like Keats if what I beheld was a vision or a waking dream.

The Durbar square is a marvel of Newa architecture indigenous to Nepal. There are various breathtaking temples and structures in an around the Durbar Square area. Statues of Garuda, the humanoid bird revered in Buddhist and Hindu mythology, a leitmotif of all Durbar Squares in Nepal, appears at various points in the Patan Durbar Square. You will encounter one of them just as you enter the Patan plaza. He will be seen poised atop a tower, his face facing the old palace.

The important temples in the area are the octagonal Chyasing Deval, a temple of unique architecture dedicated to lord Krishna, the Bhimsen Temple, Viswanath Temple, the three-storied Golden Temple, etc. My personal favorite is the Golden Temple. It is a three-storied golden pagoda styled temple located a little way off the main square. The temple, with its exquisitely carved reliefs of gods and goddesses, its brass-golden elephants with figures of kneeling men with folded hands, and other figures of unknown demigods also done in brass, and especially its torans, exquisitely carved crowning structures mainly featuring deities that are found atop doors, are coruscating jewels of Newa architecture. Like most Buddhist temples, the Golden Temple in Lalitpur also has stationary praying wheels around the temple that you can spin as you circumambulate the temple.

The Golden Temple, Patan Durbar Square, Nepal 

Inside the Golden Temple, Patan Durbar Square, Nepal

After visiting the Patan Durbar Square, we headed in the direction of the capital city of Kathmandu to see the Kathmandu Durbar Square. But before we started our next trip, we slowed down for some Nepalese fast food. Momos, or dumplings that are steamed or fried, are a delicacy in Nepal, and a dish of the same was as saporous to me as the superb monuments and buildings in Nepal. I had several dishes of momos in Nepal, and the best of them was at the Tea House Inn in Nagarkot, but more about my momo-fied experience later.

Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal

The Kathmandu Durbar Square area, also known as the Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square, boasts of dozens of temples. Among them, the most important sites include the Mahendreswar Temple, the Taleju Temple, Chyasin Dega, Kal Bhairav, Kumari-ghar, Kasthamandap, Hanuman statue and the nine-storied palace.

Kathmandu Durbar Square

As we sauntered down the main road fringed on both sides with souvenir shops and gazed at the other camera-holding tourists staring with awed us as us at the beautiful specimens of Nepali architecture, I thought about the power of art. Dequincy’s literature of power came to mind; probably, these monuments that move humanity and stir them to their depths by their sheer majestic appeal are in reality literatures in masonry crafted by authors whose names are conspicuous by their absence in the history of the world. I tried to imagine, making my way through a sunlight-washed strip of land of the Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square, the faces of the wan-looking, over-tired tanlings in grimy clothes and with dry lined hands who actually built the great pieces of architecture that surrounded me. Except, what I saw, was not a series of faces, but one giant face that comprised, like the tessellated pieces of a puzzle, a thousand faces with indistinguishable ambiguous features that belonged to the workers who built the edifices in the arena.

Kumari-ghar, Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal

Our first halt at the Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square was the Kumari-ghar, a holy home that houses Nepal’s living goddess, a mortal manifestation of the demon-slaying Hindu goddess Durga. The practice of worshipping the Kumari is an ancient Hindu practice. In India, too, the Kumari is worshipped during Durga Puja. The Kumari worship performed on the eighth day of the Durga puja by the Ramkrishna Mission, Belur Math, West Bengal, is especially famous. However, unlike the one-day ceremony of Kumari worshipping in India, the cult of venerating the Kumari is much more profound in Nepal. 

After an elaborate process of selection, which includes perlustration of horoscopes of various young girls, checking their features for thirty-two particular signs of divinity, the ancients of the Nepali community choose a small group of young girls. These contenders to the holiest of holy post of the Kumari are further subjected to the test of sitting inside a darkened room in company with freshly severed buffalo heads and demon-mask wearing dancing men. The atmosphere, as we can guess, should scare an ordinary five-year old girl, but the would-be Kumari wouldn’t display any sign of fear. Therefore, the girl who doesn’t display any hint of fear would eventually be the Kumari. 

Once selected, the Kumari moves in the Kumari-ghar where she remains until she reaches puberty. During her reign, a Kumari never leaves her dwelling, except on days of special festivity. The divine inhabitant, however, occasionally comes to one of her windows in the evening to wave at the visitors who gather at her courtyard.

When we reached the Kumari-temple, the place was already crowded with people waiting eagerly for a glance at the living goddess. The reliefs on the pillars and windows of the Kumari-ghar are fascinating and are a treat for a eyes. After a perusal of the architecture of the Kumari house, we gathered that the Kumari wouldn’t arrive until an hour later, and so, we decided to visit the other edifices around the area before we came back to the Kumari-ghar a little later. Nevertheless, when we came back from our trip after an hour we found that the Kumari had come and gone, and we never got to see the living goddess of Nepal.

Our second stop at the Kathmandu Durbar Square was the Hanuman Dhoka palace next to the famous vermillion-smeared statue of the monkey god poised on a stoned pedestal. The entrance of the palace, which houses a museum, now closed, is interesting. Two giant beautifully painted stone lions stand on either side of the main gate. As you step inside, you will find yourself in an extensive courtyard flanked on both sides by buildings belonging to the old royal family. The wood-carved relief works in the windows and the pillars of the royal buildings are spectacularly done.

On a sidewall of the building immediately left to the entrance, a series of pictures of the former kings of Nepal is displayed. If you care to know the royal history of Nepal, you may stop and study the pictures of Nepal’s royal sires. In the pictures many of the kings are depicted as standing in Napoleonic stances, wearing plumed headgears, with one elevated arm and an upraised index finger. The stairs at the back of this building will take you to the upper stories of the structure. This building, just like the nine-storied palace, has upper-stories completely vacant of furniture. Occasionally, as in the nine-storied palace, you may find a picture or two of the former kings’ in one of the walls, but other than that these buildings are completely vacant. Despite that we climbed the steep steps of the nine-storied palace and discovered the rubble-remains of the museum in one of the floors in the process. A painting of an arrow on the wall of one of the upper-stories of the palace pointing leftward accompanied by the words “museum this way” directed our attention to a room with closed iron shutters. Through the shutters, we saw the dusty remains of a vacated room with bare walls and rubble on ground. The museum was evidently closed for good.

After we exited the palace, we went to visit the famous Kal Bharav statue in the Durbar Square. This statue, depicting the destructive manifestation of lord Shiva, is undated, but said to have been installed at its present location by King Pratap Malla. The statue would awe you with its majestic proportions. Aspersed liberally with vermillion powder, the six-armed god with a golden crown is a unique structure in the Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square. Incidentally, this statue had been a great aid for the government of Nepal who used it as a place for people to swear the truth, for it is believed that those who speak a lie in front of the Kal Bhairav would inevitably face death.

Kal Bhairav, Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal

My reason for being excited about seeing the Kal Bhairav was, however, entirely unrelated to the statue’s religious significance. The place did have religious appeal for me, but for an entirely different reason: my favorite fictive hero, detective Prodosh Mitra, alias Feluda, created by Satyajit Ray, during his adventures in Kathmandu in the novella Jato Kando Kanthmandu (Criminals of Kathmandu), had actually been to that place. A sketch in the book showed Feluda’s cousin and assistant, Topshe, and his friend, mystery-thriller writer Jatayu, alias Lal Mohan Ganguly, standing before the stone statue of the Kal Bhairav. It was a pilgrimage for me, visiting the same spot where Feluda had been several years before. The statue looked exactly how it had been portrayed in the book, and I was thrilled to be in its vicinity. For a moment, I felt I too was part of Feluda’s adventures in Kathmandu, and was busily engaged with the trio—Feluda, Topshe, and Jatayu— as they hunt down the criminals in Kathmandu. My husband, who is well aware of my eccentricities, took a photograph of me standing in the exact spot where Jatayu and Topshe stood in the picture. It was the most memorable picture of my Nepal trip.

 

The Sketch by Satyajit Ray Showing Jatayu and Topse Standing in front of the Kal Bhairav Statue in Kathmandu

Tago Ga`n, or the Big Bell, was our next stop. It is a bell supported by a couple of sturdy-looking stone pillars and a tiled roof. It is only when the deity Degitaleju is being worship that the bell is ever rung. It is just another religious accessory that looked very dapper in the area.

The Big Bell at the Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal 

Gaddhi Baithak, a white building, was our last stop before we finished our day tour. Built in 1908, this building, which was an extension of the old palace, was homage to the classical European style of architecture, and looked terribly out of place in company with the pagoda-style buildings that surrounded it. Albeit an anachronism, the neoclassical building was beautiful in every respect, like all the other structures in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square.

Having finished viewing and photographing the major edifices in and around the Durbar Square, my husband and I went to a coffee shop in the neighborhood to savor the taste of Made-in-Nepal coffee. The Nepalese did themselves well when it came to coffee making. We sat at a window seats at the coffee shop sipping our cappuccino and watching the crowd gathering around the Durbar Square with a feeling of satisfaction that comes when a day is very well spent.