It’s becoming a pleasant routine - immediately after arriving somewhere new, you look for a few other bewildered-looking foreigners and figure out how to get into a nice place to stay without any rip-offs. So after arrival at Kathmandu’s city-centre international airport, I bundled into a prepaid 200Rs taxi to town.
The Nepalese Maoists that you may have read about recently seem to be in control of the whole country except for the Kathmandu valley and the main routes out of it. In the past nine years, the Maoist insurgency (you could call it a war) has cost 10, 000 lives, and especially recently the successes of the Maoists have been in he international news. I suspect that the majority are not hardcore Commies waving the Little Red Book, but actually disgruntled peasants and rural folk who have just had enough of their ultra-corrupt government and the hassles they have to go through.
They’re no angels either - while I was in Kathmandu, I read about the Maoists kidnapping 500 (!) people from a few villages; these people get recruited to be active for them. Also: ’’six teachers and students were abducted yesterday for not hoisting the party flags as directed by the rebels’’.
This is all very worrying to the locals, many of whom depend so much on tourism for their incomes... every day the newspapers were full of articles and remarks connecting local events to their effect on tourism. It’s a wacky country... but as an ignorant simpleminded tourist wandering around Kathmandu it all looks peaceful and prosperous. Despite the recent problems, this year there’s been a 30% increase of foreign tourists coming in.
While northern India was closed up for tourists after the wars with India and Pakistan in the 1960s, Nepal went the other way. The result is a good reputation, extremely cocky rickshaw drivers, a highly developed tourism industry, expensive guesthouses with a la carte menus high in the mountains, and Kathmandu’s famous Thamel district.
No more than rice paddies in the 1970s, Thamel is now an ugly area with narrow streets lined by cheap clothes shop after cheap CD shop after cheap antique shop after restaurant. It’s where most backpackers end up, where bands play in bars until late, where you can’t walk over the street without hassle... and where I decided not to stay. On recommendation of my Israeli friends, I ended up at the near-empty Moonstay Lodge, bordering Kathmandu’s old town area on ’Freak Street’ - the street where the first real hippies also stayed back in the good old days.
I must say that, Kathmandu impressed me. Here’s a list of things that it has, which are absent in India:
spanking clean streets
motor bike helmet law enforcement (so everybody wears one)
modern/Western music from all corners, also in villages
locals who like and eat pastries and cakes (ie the bakeries are not only for tourists)
red brick paved streets (just like Holland!)
modern clothes
many Chinese products (India has hardly any trade with China since the 1960s conflict)
rubber boots
The general atmosphere in Kathmandu is much more quiet than a comparable Indian city, there are just less people walking around. It somehow also seems a wealthier place than any Indian city I have been (even though Nepal is even poorer than India) - there are less beggars and poor-looking people around... maybe they’ve all fled to the hills to join the Maoists. The locals like to wear hats similar to the Indonesian Soeharto caps, and are shorter than the average Indian. Another big difference is that Indian cities open up shop very early - by 07:00 it’s usually a busy as can be, while in Kathmandu most shops are buttoned up until 09:00 in the morning.
Kathmandu’s heart is Durbar square, an area with several ancient temples and the former royal palace. Different from any Hindu temples I’ve seen before, these are huge wooden building with jutting roofs supported by beautifully carved beams. Some of the temples are placed on high step-like pyramids, and you have great views sitting on the upper levels. Unfortunately, as soon as you sit down, local guides try to chat you up for a guided tour - but by being firm and inquisitive you can have a nice chat with them anyway.
One of the buildings on Durbar square, the beautifully carved Kumari Ghar palace, houses an actual goddess - the Kumari. This is a young girl (4-7 years old) who passes some strict tests. I’m told that she has a normal life, going to school etc, but has to live with her proud family, locked up in the palace outside school times. She has to present herself to the people gathered in the courtyard of the palace a couple of times a day - which must be stunningly boring for a young girl like her. She’s a goddess only until she reaches ’womanhood’. Also, if she injures herself and bleeds, the game is over and a new goddess has to be found revealed. It’s part of the Newari cult of Buddhism, Newaris being the ’tribe’ that used to dominate this area before the Nepali ’tribe’ arrived. And just 6km down the road in Patan there’s another Kumari goddess, so she’s not alone. Maybe they should start a union to protest against their crappy employment situations. Striking Goddesses - that would be a first.
As I’m pretty sceptical of all things metaphysical I was glad to finally be able to see an actual God, and sure enough, at 16:00 the goddess’ dad appeared at the wooden window asking all tourists to put away their cameras, and then, for about 10 seconds, the girl appeared, kneeled at the window with praying hands, and then quickly stood up and left again. Although the Nepalis gathered in the courtyard were delighted with her apparition, the goddess herself looked rather bored with it all.
Because it was still monsoon up here (with some spectacular and warm rain showers while I was walking around) there was no reason for me to stay long in Nepal or go into the countryside except for the immediate surroundings of Kathmandu. And luckily there’s lots to see there, with the UNESCO-status towns of Patan and Baktapur within 15 kilometers.
I rented a bike for the day to get out there, viewing the old temples around the main square of Patan first (similar to those in Kathmandu, but with a renovated palace that held one of the best museums I’ve come across this trip). Trying to reach Baktapur via small country lanes I realised that having a map that looks good, doesn’t mean the map is good... I got stranded ar dead-end roads or rivers with no bridges (despite what the map said), so I headed for the main road to Baktapur which was so polluted that I gave up on it and travelled there the next day by (smelly) bus.
Baktapur (town entrance fee 750Rs is the pride of Kathmandu valley, with a beautiful red-brick main square with old temples, a big palace, nice views of the surrounding mountains, good restaurants and fascinating side-streets where local life trickles on like it always has. Just as some cities in India, there were plenty of irritatingly persistent ’art school students’ who would just love to show you their school, which of course doubles as a shop selling the thankas (Buddhist religious paintings). I’m getting inventive in getting rid of them.
Back in Kathmandu, I visited perhaps the highlight of the valley, the huge stupa (holy mound) at Bouddha, where hundreds of Tibetan Buddhists were walking around, clockwise, swinging their prayer wheels. The stupa itself is maybe 40m high, with some scary-looking all-seeing-eyes painted on the side, and topped with a golden spire from which many strings of prayer flags flutter.