Bhaktapur

Thursday, 30/4/98

A tremendous day spent visiting Bhaktapur...

This was a tremendous day, spent visiting Bhaktapur. This is a religious city some miles to the east of Kathmandu, which costs 300 rupees to enter and which has barred vehicles from the centre.

Entering it feels like stepping back into 1498. First of all we wandered through very narrow streets with old-fashioned medieval tenements several storeys high and approaching each other at the top storeys.

I am reminded of Edinburgh in the middle ages and can just imagine shouts of ‘Gardyloo’ as the slops come down from the sky.

Ceremonial carriage in front of one of Bhaktapur's pagodas

The Ancient City of Bhaktapur, east of Kathmandu

Lokking off the square onto a narrow alley

There are many temples, stupas, gompas etc in the big squares for both Buddhist and Hindu Gods. An incredible place.

I am conscious that as we walk through their streets, we tourists are the animals in the zoo and the residents are the human visitors. Of course foreign visitors are rumoured to be fabulously rich, so a number of little kids follow us around. They are both entertaining and informative.

Before we parted from the kids I was haltingly trying to tell one of them what I did for a living. He stopped me: “I think you a joker” he said confidently (it sounded better without an ‘are’!). I like it.

Marvellous old Bhaktapur temple

One of many temples in Bhaktapur

When we got back, Andy gave us the rundown on what we could expect on trek...

  • The Russian helicopters which had taken over the flights to Lukla were no longer able to carry passengers (politics) and it was back to the hairy journeys by light plane landing on Lukla’s mountainside airstrip (but the good news was that all the wrecked planes had been cleared from the runway).
What we feared - an old biplane held together with string

Twin-engined light plane similar to those on the Kathmandu-Lukla route

The planes were more like this - and very efficiently piloted

  • Gulp! I had laughed at all those stories from the past of people being terrified by the plane journeys to Lukla, because now that these big safe helicopters had taken over, no one in their right mind would go by light plane …

  • Now it was back to using the light planes.

  • This would at once raise us up to 9350 feet, something which used to take another week of walking in the past

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