April 6 - 11th, 1985: Kathmandu and Patan

  Taken from Back to the East, India, Nepal, Kashmir 

6^th April

So we booked out of the Ashok Yatri Newas hotel. We had to get a special slip from reception to present to the security guard on the door. This took ten minutes. When we got to the door, the guard wasn’t there.

Next we took a rickshaw down to the Tourist Camp to board the “Deluxe India super coach” which looks like a wreck, to Kathmandu. The 4 PM departure time became 4.45, not too bad for India. At about 11 PM that night, the coach broke down.

7^th April

Very little sleep. It was now 8 AM and the coach had not moved.

PRAYING FOR A BUS

by

Alun Buffry

We left Delhi 4 P.M. today

To Kathmandu by bus

But midnight whilst still on the way

We stopped without a fuss.

It had been quite a bumpy ride

Through places without names

The seating wasn't very wide

No sleep, it was a shame.

Half day upon this bus we are

Frying in the heat,

This is no deluxe bus by far

It is a lying cheat.

Another bus soon coming here,

Well that is what we're told,

Exactly when is not made clear,

No Indian is that bold.

Then still we're waiting on the bus,

Later on that day,

A Foreign girl invited us

To come along and pray.

"We'll do some prayers and puja chants

And maybe sing a song,

If that don't work we'll maybe dance

And bus will come along."

The bus to Kathmandu we think

Will much improve our mood,

And on the way, perhaps a drink,

And then a plate of food.

"Oh bus! Oh bus! Show us your magic!

Come and save this day,

For this trip we're on is become quite tragic..."

Oh! Now we're on our way!

7^th April

I felt as if we’d worked out some bad Karma after such a bumpy ride, being at the back of the bus and constantly being tossed into the air, often hitting my head on the inside bus roof and hardly sleeping at all.

We reached the border with Nepal about 10 AM. We were still here at 5.30.

The Nepalese customs officers seemed to be looking through every Nepalese and Indians cases and bags, but now ours.

This place was called Sunauli. It was very dry and dusty. We had a good Thali meal for lunch; that’s a metal plate with small amounts of vegetable, rice, potatoes, yoghurt, chapati. It cost next to nothing.

We had now been approached by a group of boys and young teenagers; they were very friendly and seemed to think that Lesley was a film star. They provided us with information and directed us to a bank. One boy, named Sankara, just wanted his photo taken with Lesley.

There were a number of younger kids about, trying get us to change money or to sell us cold drinks or spicy cucumber slices; cucumber was one of the few fruits or vegetables that I detest.

The journey from the border was again very bumpy. In the future I will offer baksheesh if necessary for a seat up front. We stopped along the road at a couple of nameless places for chai. In one place there were jugs of water on the tables. They had bits floating in. I saw an old guy remove his scarf and use it as a filter.

Eventually we arrived in Kathmandu and were taken by bicycle rickshaw to our hotel. It’s about £5 a night for a double.

But there’s plenty of lovely bird song to lift the mood. As we looked down from our window we saw a small courtyard with what looks like a shrine with a small lingam, opposite the hotel. I had not noticed that before. But it’s no big surprise as there are shrines everywhere, many seemingly abandoned and uncared for.

The eyes we saw that are painted on some temples and other places are the all-seeing eyes of Lord Buddha, often incorporated into statues of Hindu gods in Nepal and seen as an incarnation of Vishnu, as were Rama and Krishna. There are quite a few temples and statues of Ganeesh, the elephant-headed god.

Ganeesh was not actually an elephant, but an elephant-headed humanoid, also known as Ganesha Ganapati and Vinayaka, was one of the best-known and most worshipped deities in the Hindu Pantheon. He was widely revered, more specifically, as the remover of obstacles; the patron of arts and sciences; and the deva of intellect and wisdom. As the god of beginnings, he was honoured at the start of rites and ceremonies. Ganesha was also invoked as patron of letters and learning during writing sessions.

Ganesha was the son of Shiva and Parvati and he was the brother of Karthikeya (or Subrahmanya), the god of war. He was created by his mother using earth which she moulded into the shape of a boy. As Shiva was away on his meditative wanderings, Parvati set her new son as guard while she bathed. Unexpectedly, Shiva returned home and, on finding the boy, and outraged at his impudence in claiming he was Parvati's son, Shiva called for his gang of demons, the bhutaganas, who fought ferociously with the boy. However, the youngster easily held his own against such fearsome adversaries and Vishnu was forced to intervene in the form of Maya and, whilst the boy was distracted by her beauty, the demons, or Shiva himself, lopped off his head. At the commotion, Parvati ran from her bath and remonstrated with Shiva for so summarily killing their son. Repentant, Shiva ordered a new head to be found for the boy and, as the first animal available was an elephant, so Ganesha gained a new head and became the most distinctive of the Hindu gods.

PATAN

Today we took a three-wheeler tempo to Patan, which cost us about 50 pence.

Patan, sometimes called Lalitpur, was on the other side of the Bagmati river; the name means City of Beauty. It was the second city in the Kathmandu valley, but nowadays it’s really just part of Kathmandu itself. It’s a Buddhist place. We get out of the tempo just outside the city gate, where we find the Royal cafe and stop for a samosa. Then we walk down some very smelly streets with open sewage and rubbish, to reach another square. On the way we visit a Buddhist monastery called Hiranya Varna Mahabihar, built in the twelfth century with its gold-plated roofs. Inside we see many prayer wheels and paintings of Buddha. It was a three-storey structure with Buddha images in the courtyard.

Nearby was the five-storey Shiva Temple called Kumbeshwar; the water in the courtyard was supposed to come from Gosain Kunda, a lake in Nepal’s national park at over 14,000 feet. It was considered as the abode of the Hindu deities Shiva and Gauri.

Patan’s Durbar Square was crowded with temples. The first seen in Bimsen Temple with a pillar at the front and a lion on top. Bhimsen was a character from the scripture called the Mahabharata and one of the strongest people that ever lived.

Next to the shiva temple are two stone elephants that guard the door.

Also in the Square are two statues, one of King Malla on the other of Narasimha, and another Shiva temple.

Down one side of the square was the Sundari Chow or beautiful yard.

 

Here we saw the royal bath and a small replica of the Krishna Temple. Inside the courtyard there were three statues of the gods Ganga and Jumna, standing or dancing on a crocodile and turtle.

Back outside in the street, we saw statues of Ganeesh, Narsimha and Hanuman.

 8^th April

The hotel and room are clean and we have a hot shower and room service. At 7 AM the room from the window facing westerly was magic, with several pagodas and stretching over the city to the distant mountains, with a very magical palace-looking building on the hill. The light was perfect.

At dawn the city wakes to the sounds of chanting and singing, bells and musical instruments, car horns and beeps.

Later though, it became hazy.

WAKING IN NEPAL

by

Alun Buffry

Outside

Is a cloudy sky, bright sun between, a slight breeze,

The sound of one man chanting.

And all elsewhere a few notes on some type of magic flute -

A strange cacophony of bells and horns and clattering.

No two horns seem to sound the same.

A mother engine? Sounds like a tractor - probably a bus!

Beep, beep, beep.

If I look out of the window I see tin rooftops,

Blimsen Tower, a glorious white standing before the blue;

And there - a temple, a pagoda, a woman sitting with washing lay out to dry,

Pigeons coo-ing, crows a-crowing, gardens growing,

Potted plants that people tend,

A bicycle rickshaw, a cow, a man with a bundle of wood on his head!

A cockerel crows as another motorbike passes 3 men trying to move a fridge,

Young girl, proud, staring into space,

Three boys rolling rubber wheels of glee amidst the rubble,

Whilst more look on admiringly.

Yet another dog - a tempo (three-wheeler) barking as two boys, hand-in-hand,

Laugh at a goat.

Cock crows, horns, far away mountainous silences

Surround the Monkey Temple,

Like a golden palace on the hill.

Behind - another hill.

Shame about the dusty haze.

We spent most of the day resting up, sitting on a hotel balcony recovering from that dreadful journey, but it’s feeling very good here. I reckoned we’d try to get some Nepalese hash tomorrow. We had spaghetti, rice pudding and a sad looking scone for dinner followed by an early night.

9^th April

Slept to the sound of barking dogs and awoke feeling exhausted and not too well.

Again we heard devotional songs, chanting and bells. We had to sort out tickets back to Delhi for a couple of weeks time and get a city map, then go exploring.

It was not at all like I had imagined it, not really like India at all. There was a lot of British stuff in the shops; cigarettes and rolling tobacco and skins, chocolates and sweets and alcohol, all cheap.

Nepal was a religiously tolerant country, with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and other all living together seemingly in mutual respect and tolerance. Restaurants sell meat and fish meals as well as plenty of vegetarian.

We strolled about the Square and found Freak Street, where all the westerners, Americans and Australians go, famous for its hash shops. Ganga Road and the Post Office. I bought some cheap headphones, then we went back to Durbar Square.

 

Here there was a collection of many temples. As we walked, we saw the Shiva-Pavati Temple and from a window there people watching the street below. Some temples have erotic carvings of Tantric yoga, in particular the Jagnarth Temple. Some people believe that the carvings were done in praise of the goddess of lightning, whom, being a chaste virgin, would not strike a temple with such shocking carvings.

Behind that temple we saw the Kalo Bhairab, a massive stone image of the said-to-be terrifying Black Bharab. This was once used as a lie detector; suspected wrongdoers were forced to touch the feet of the god and swear innocence and anyone that told untruths would die. 

 The Palace was near here. Along the outside there are inscriptions in eighteen languages including English and French. It was established by King Malla in the seventeenth century. Legend says that milk will flow from the spout in the middle if anyone can read all the languages.

At the gate to the palace was a statue of Hanuman, the monkey-headed devotee of Rama. His face was obscured by red paint put on it by the faithful.

There was a police station on one side of the square and near here there are giant drums built in the eighteenth century.

Also near here lies the Kumari Devi Temple. This was three storeys high.

There was also another temple here, the Taleju Temple, dedicated to a family deity and built in the sixteenth century. At 115 feet in height, it was Durbar Square’s most magnificent temple stands at its north-eastern extremity but was not open to the public. Even for Hindus, admission was restricted; they can only visit it briefly during the annual Dasain festival. The 35m-high temple was built in 1564 by Mahendra Malla. Taleju Bhawani was originally a goddess from the south of India, but she became the titular deity, or royal goddess, of the Malla kings in the 14th century. The temple stands on a 12-stage plinth, dominating the Durbar Sq area. The eighth stage of the plinth forms a wall around the temple, in front of which are 12 miniature temples. Four more miniature temples stand inside the wall, which had four beautifully carved wide gates.

When we left the Square, we bought some reasonable but not excellent quality hash near the Swiss Travellers Restaurant and ate an excellent fish tandoori just down the road in the Other Room and Bar. Lesley had paratha and salad and we washed it down with brandy coffee – all for about six UK pounds.

It seemed like there are a few interesting places worth seeing not far from Kathmandu. A bus ride to Bhaktapur and a short trek to be considered.

10^th April

It rained during the night. That had freshened the air.

We walked to the Post Office again and then went to Bhimsem Tower also called Dharahara. This was a nine-storey, 203.0 foot tower at the centre of Sundhara. It was built in 1832 by Mukhtiyar, equivalent to a prime minister, under the commission of Gueen Lalit Tripurasundari. The tower had a spiral staircase containing 213 steps. The eighth floor had a circular balcony for observers that provided a panoramic view of the valley.

Then we went to near the park to see where the buses to Patan leave from.

So then we went to Tina Travel to confirm the bus back to Delhi on the 23^rd. Nothing being as simple as we thought, we were told that he would need to contact Ali to change the dates for our trip to Kashmir, so we could have a few more days here. We also booked bus tickets to Pokhara. The money we have was going fast but that cannot be helped. I would write back to Norwich for more money and get it sent to Delhi or Kashmir.

KATMANDONEIN
by

Alun Buffry

Now we've been in Kathmandu a while.
Is it just the highness makes us smile?
Is it the atmosphere makes us light?
Or the mountains within our sight?

Lesley reckons people here take bigger steps!
Maybe they are all secret tantric cult adepts?
Anyway you look at it, they're harpy
Even if their ways are sometimes crappy!

How come everything here seems so cheap?
Yet money seems so hard to keep?
Don't seem to spend a lot in any place
Just drifting round the city in a space.

Decided to stay here a few more days,
Smoking trying not to get out-hazed.
In the morning here if there is no sun,
Read a local Tantric yoga book, it could be fun.

11^th April

We went to bed early last night, before 10, and woke up at 6.30 feeling tired. I don’t think I have fully recovered from the bus ride from Delhi and maybe a bit dehydrated. Also I am becoming more irritated by flies.