Kathmandu - Exotic chaos

The very name of the city evokes an ‘edge-of-the-world’ exoticism that attracts misfits: Kathmandu, capital city of the mountain kingdom of Nepal. 

Nestled in a broad, fertile valley behind a wall of protective ridges, it remains isolated in many ways.





Once a city state at the caravan cross-roads between the kingdoms of India and Tibet, Kathmandu achieved its golden apex in the late 1600s when the Malla kings absorbed foreign influences and competed to build impressive palaces and temples.

Then in the latter half of the 1700s, Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ruler of the tiny hilltop kingdom of Gorkha, created “Greater Nepal” by conquering almost 50 other Himalayan states – building a bulwark that held the British Empire at bay and royal bloodline that survives to this day.

Modernization arrived slowly.  The Shah kings (and the parallel and even more powerful Rana family of Prime Ministers) kept the country isolated.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that a shaky democratic system was established, dismantled and re-grown.  A Maoist insurgency (and eventual government), the mass murder of the Royal Family in 2001 and rampant political corruption have kept Kathmandu and Nepal in a form of economic and social suspended animation for the past 2 decades.

Today Kathmandu retains an air of other-worldly, medieval exoticism – a stage set Spielberg would have dreamt up for the filthy outpost of some strange, eroded empire. 

Along the old city’s random tangle of dusty, narrow lanes, simple wooden shutters are all that separate the tiny, dark shops from the bustle of peddle carts, armies of revving kamikaze motor bikes and tentative taxis – brushing side-mirrors against the elbows of the pedestrian throngs.  


Behind those shutters, the city’s merchants good-naturedly bargain for every manner of goods and services. 



 

At Kathmandu’s heart is the glorious Durbar Square – a relatively calm pedestrian zone crowded with intricately decorated temples and towers, impressive statues and gates, and palaces from a range of eras protecting beautiful chowks (courtyards). 


 

• ·      -  The jewel-like Kumari Bahal palace – built by the Malla kings, still houses the prepubescent Living Goddess – who appears in at the intricately carved 3rd floor window at designated audience hours.
• ·      -  The erotic tantric carvings on the struts of the Jagannath Temple – guides are hesitant to point it out to women and children.

• ·      -  The Hanuman Dohka – a 1908 royal palace modelled on London’s National Gallery is now a dusty museum dedicated to the final, tragic Shah kings. 

• ·      -  My favourite was the nine-storey wooden Basantapur Tower – built in 1770 and decorated in intricately carved screens and  roof struts.  From the top floor, the king could survey the entire valley, ensuring all was well by checking chimneys for cooking fires. 

 

One of the pleasures of Kathmandu is exploring the blending of Bhuddism and Hinduism at impressive religious sites. 
 

We visited the Bodhnath (Boudha) Stupa, a massive, pristine-white structure rising from the centre of an oval square of narrow brick buildings. 

Masses of pilgrims - many in the maroon robes of monks, circumnavigate the base of the structure, spinning each of the 147 prayer wheels set into niches as they walk and chant. 

Above them, a perfectly proportioned dome is topped by a tall plinth where the mesmerizing painted eyes of Buddha gaze out from below a 13-tiered gilded tower.  Colourful prayer flags are strung from the highest point and flutter against a clear blue sky. 

 

These two sites, and the evocative Swayambhunath (monkey temple) that mixes Buddhist and Hindu iconography on a steep suburban hillside, are rare outposts of serenity amidst the filth, pollution and noise of this chaotic city.  A day or two and most visitors are ready to flee to the mountains.   

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