A walk from Thamel to Durbar Square

I successfully navigated a short walk in Kathmandu without getting lost for the first time today. I have never been in a city that is so hard to find my way around. Nothing is in a straight line, most of the streets are simply unnamed, and the ones that do have names are rarely labeled and when they are the signs are in Devenegari so I can't read them. Add to that the utter zaniness and pandemonium that is the streets of Kathmandu, and I am pretty much constantly in a state of complete disorientation.

It's kind of liberating.

When I wasn't trying to read my map and avoid getting run over (no small feat) I saw some wonderful stuff.






A major market center:

Baskets of button mushrooms and giant oyster mushrooms:













The street I took leading from the market. Nothing special going on, and not many tourists. Just a normal Kathmandu street scene. You can't see them, but there are bicycles and motorcycles cruising through here, too. And about 100 shops selling bindhis and sparkly bracelets.



This little alley had about 20 shops selling brightly colored, sparkly beads that are worn by married Nepali women:



A piece of wood with hundreds of coins nailed to it. It is a shrine for good teeth. Don't ask, that's all I know.





This ringmaker was sitting in a tiny, bare shop. He set a short piece of metal in a block of burnt wood and blew on the torch to heat it. Then he pulled the metal out, pounded it, and repeated.







There are so many temples, shrines, stupas and other religious sites that they are part of daily life, sometimes quite literally. This shrine was being used to hold a laundry line:


Jeans Joint





This man was frying up the most beautiful treats:

Sadly, they were as tasteless as they were pretty.












When I reached Durbar Square, I was beat but there was no place to sit and have a drink so I took my first rickshaw ride back to Thamel. This is my view from the seat of the rickshaw:

When I got out I gave the driver a little tip (it is unusual to tip here) and asked if I could take his photo squeezing his homemade horn, which sounded just like a duck.

Bhaktapur

Today I decided to get out of the madness of Kathmandu to the slightly slower pace of Bhaktapur. One of the three medieval city-states of the Kathmandu Valley, it is the best preserved.





View of the Himalayas from town:


Outside the main city gate:




This is a temple dedicated to Bhairab on one of the main squares.

Bhairab is a fearsome Hindu god, but the image of him here is only 15 cm. tall and headless. When I discovered this I couldn't help but think of that episode of Buffy where the gang didn't quite manage to stop the frat boys from conjuring the big bad demon, only to discover that the demon was the size of a mouse, whereupon Buffy stepped on him.


Nyatapola Temple, the tallest in Nepal.

Statues on the steps of the temple:



Tihar, one of the biggest festivals in Nepal, is in a week and there are garlands of marigolds and marigold petals everywhere in anticipation.






It is the time of year when women are drying the recently harvested grain. All over the city there were piles of drying grain being swept and winnowed.






In Potters' Square, there was more grain being dried.


There were also ceramic pots being made and fired.




I saw a sign for this shop on the edge of one of the main squares.


I ducked through a low doorway into a courtyard, then through a tiny door into a small room with a tiny staircase. There were a few pairs of shoes by the stairs so I took my cue, removed my own, and ascended through a hole in the floor of the workshop where I found a father and son who paint and sell thangkas, a form of devotional art.


They told me it takes 15 days to paint a small thangka, about 12" square. This is a large one in progress:


Just before getting a cab back to Kathmandu, I stopped in a sweet shop for fortification. I came home with a piece of this yummy milk sweet topped with crispy rice.