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Nepal: Kathmandu

The posing sadhus in Durbar Square
The posing sadhus in Durbar Square

A lone white man ambles through the square, looking lost in the way that only tourists can manage. Durbar Square is bustling, but in his mission to take in the atmosphere he's committed the ultimate sin and the touts aren't going to miss a trick. 'Rickshaw, mate, cheap price'; 'Picture? One picture?'; 'Something to smoke...?'; 'Money change, you make money change?'; 'I am very good guide, sir, many things to see in Durbar Square'; 'Just looking, sir, just looking, very good stones'. In Kathmandu, you learn to look occupied all the time if you want to avoid hassle, and he'll learn quickly enough.

Kathmandu's bustling Durbar Square
Kathmandu's bustling Durbar Square

The Monkey Temple

Swayambhunath Temple
The all-seeing eyes of Swayambhunath

Luckily the rest of the city has plenty of charm, even through the misty haze of a strange apathy that struck me as I explored. Swayambhunath Temple, colloquially known as the Monkey Temple due to its local residents, is a pleasant but not terribly surprising Nepalese temple – Buddhist stupas, Hindu shikharas and pigeons galore – but its unearthly combination of Hinduism and hawking makes it worth a visit. Besides, western tourists are such funny creature sometimes, with their inappropriate clothes, in-your-face photography and a total lack of bargaining ability, that I found watching the watchers much more interesting than yet another collection of gunk-smeared statues of the Hindu-Buddhist pantheon.

Swayambhunath Temple
Swayambhunath Temple is lovely

The Suburbs

Marijuana plants
Marijuana grows naturally along the River Bagmati in Kathmandu

One day I walked south of Kathmandu to Patan, previously a separate city state but now effectively a suburb of the capital; the third city in the Kathmandu Valley, Bhaktapur, is a little further to the east, and was again a separate state with a separate king before the three cities were finally united in 1382 by the rulers of Kathmandu (which is why Kathmandu is the capital and not Patan or Bhaktapur). Patan has as its main attraction a huge number of temples, and it was here that I realised that I'm templed out and am finding it hard to give a hoot about the things. Imagine doing a tour of Europe where the main attraction was churches; after a couple of months you'd probably break into a cold sweat at the sight of yet another spire. For me, anything to do with Buddha, Siva, Krishna, Vishnu and the rest of the gang is, by now, just another building.

Kathmandu street scene
Kathmandu street scene
Bagmati River
The Bagmati River

1 OK, this is poetic licence, I admit. You're just as likely to find a speeding car in Kathmandu as you are on the M25 at 5.30 on a Friday afternoon, but what the Nepalese lack in velocity they make up for with voracity, and what their rusty old cars lack in aesthetics they make up for with acoustics. As long as the accelerator's connected and the horn works, the car is fine.