Travel Day 993 – Kathmandu, NEPAL
It was of course raining again, but I couldn’t really sit still for very long and as soon as the weather permitted, I walked through some of Kathmandu’s courtyards…
Kathesimbhu Stupa in Kathmandu
While the UNESCO enlisted Durbar Square was definitely the most prominent place to experience Kathmandu, there were a lot of smaller public places as well but most of them were hidden away in courtyards. It was actually quite amazing to see that almost every single house gave way to a little courtyard inside with a small stupa or temple, but there were also a lot of bigger courtyards with huge structures inside and some of those I visited today…
Luckily I had been in Kathmandu before and so it was actually quite interesting to try to navigate around by memory while somewhat getting lost at the same time. So one of the first places I came across was the big Kathesimbhu Stupa, which was situated in the middle of a courtyard with prayer flags spanning back and forth to it and many smaller stupas around. It was a great place to wander about and soak in some of the atmosphere while envisioning Kathmandu about 50 years back…
Seto Machendranah Temple in Nepal
Another structure noteworthy was the nice Seto Machendranath Temple, situated in a bigger courtyard as well. It was supposed to be one of the important temples in Kathmandu and while I was struggling again to separate the Buddhist from the Hindu places, it was actually amazing to see how they both co-existed here. There even seemed to some sort of fusion between the two, leaving Nepal with a very unique sort of temples, stupas and shrines…
Most of the other courtyards I happened to walk in had rather smaller structures, but it was still amazing to see that literally every single courtyard had some sort of beautifully carved religious structure. Only some modern houses in the background were telling how Kathmandu was in a state of change to a more modern city, while leaving only those little hidden treasures behind in some of the long before existing courtyards…
Stupas and Shrines in Kathmandu
In the end I really only made it down to the Durbar Square again before I had to admit defeat to the rainy weather. It was definitely more fun to walk around and explore every little corner of Kathmandu with a bit of sunshine, but for right now I was quite happy with what I had seen. The courtyards and of course the UNESCO enlisted Durbar Square helped a lot to fully arrive in Kathmandu and to remind me again that even if Nepal was next door to India and seemingly similar to it, it still was a very different country with a unique identity and history…
Leave a Reply