48 Hours in Kathmandu

In 2013, MK and I trekked in Nepal’s Himalayas, spending time both pre- and post-trek in Kathmandu and Pokhara. This is part 3 of an 8 part series on our experiences. Please use this site’s search function to read other parts of this Nepal series.

Our room on the fifth floor of our hotel overlooked the city’s nearby Thamel tourist district with the larger city and the Himalaya foothills off in the distance. We spent time walking the area and visiting the sites before our scheduled trek in the Himalayas.

The streets were small and narrow, winding themselves through scores of shops, bars, restaurants, guest houses, and hostels. A "tourist ghetto" I heard it described in one of the guide books we had purchased.

There were the usual touts and beggars. One man approached me asking if I needed to buy from him pot or other drugs he was selling. A shopkeeper offered to make me a t-shirt having a size and design of my choosing. One little boy scooted across the street on what were tiny stumps for legs, begging for handouts from us and other tourists. Another shopkeeper, from whom I was buying a map, had to chase this boy away since he kept interrupting us as we looked over the virtues of one map versus another.

Down the street, and disheveled woman with a little baby girl in her arms, came up to MK.

"Please help me, my baby needs food," she pleaded, working to exploit MK's motherly instincts.

"No, no, we can't," we kept replying, turning away from the sorry, tearful faces of this mother and her tiny daughter. We know from experience that once you give money to one, scores of others will come out of nowhere asking you for the same. 

A mix-up prevented our tour organizer from meeting us at the hotel for our pre-trek overview. A note left at the front desk indicated that they will instead do so tomorrow after our scheduled city tour. After visiting a couple of restaurants and bars during the early evening hours, we turned in, both of us getting a deep and restful sleep after three long days of travel. 

The next morning, Dil, our guide for the day, showed up at our hotel to lead us on a tour to various UNESCO world heritage sites.  We visited three main sites. The first was Bhaktapur and Durbar Square. At one time, this was the capital city of Nepal. It is now a "living museum" according to the brochures. It definitely lived up to that name for the area was not only home to 100,000 people, it was also blessed with many temples, palaces, and stupas all designed with unique Buddhist and Hindu influenced Newari architecture. 

Boudhanath was visited next. Here, a large stupa serves as one of the most significant Buddhist monuments in the world. It is also one of the most important places of pilgrimage for the Buddhists.  At its base are hundreds of Mani (prayer) wheels. A ritual at dawn and dusk is to walk around the base (always in a clockwise direction) and spin the wheels as you pass. Although it was now mid-afternoon, we did the same, reverently.

It is not known exactly when this stupa was built, but estimates place it in the 16th century. Those that did the construction would likely be horrified at the t-shirt shops, convenience stores, and souvenir stands that now surround it.

The third site we visited was the most interesting. Pashupati is considered by the Hindus as their most holy site in the world. It is here, amongst the shrines and the temples, that they bring their dead to the edge of the river and cremate the bodies. 

A dozen or so raised platforms are spread up and down the river's edge. Only Hindus can be on that side of the river. For us tourists and other non Hindus, we were restricted to the other side, but free to look across to see the grieving families and the cremation process.

On these platforms, a funeral pyre is formed using local lumber from the nearby forested hillsides. The shrouded body is placed on this pyre. When complete, the ashes are then swept into the river, an act of supreme devotion to their now lost loved one. Several of these pyres were underway; the scent of wood smoke and cremated remains filled the air. Family members were adding wood and straw to their fires. Many of us on-lookers covered our faces with scarves or jackets to minimize how much of this we were breathing in. 

Near one of the platforms, a family was cleansing a recently deceased relative. The body was shrouded in white cloth. After the cleaning, they brought it up from the riverside to a place near the platform.  While some created the pile of wood, others would sit on the adjacent steps and pray for their now dead family member.

We couldn't stay long enough to see the fire started, but it was clear that sometime later in the afternoon another cremation would be underway. Meanwhile, little boys, naked to the world, we're swimming in the river, which was grey looking from the silt and ashes swept into it from the adjacent platforms. 

MK wanted to move down the river a bit to "see how the other cremations were coming along." On our side of the river, there were many monkeys. When not also swimming in the river, they would fight amongst the many stray dogs for various scraps of food and other garbage which was strewn everywhere. Two of the dogs had other business on their minds with one up on top of the other from behind.

Holy men, their faces painted red, yellow, and often ghostly white, would sit on temple steps, calmly posing for pictures the many tourists were taking of them. Beggars would ask us for money. Artisans were pushy, pleading and nagging us to buy a trinket from them. A local man, obviously stricken with mental health issues, would walk and strut about, yelling words up to the sky, pounding his fists together, sometimes pounding the pavement instead.

Later in the afternoon, we met our tour company at their offices close to our hotel. We were given our porter bags and instructions on what to expect in the coming days while on our trek. There was a big mix up on the use of our travelers’ checks to pay the balance of our costs. This was stressful trying to sort out.

We ran out of time for it was getting late in the evening, leaving this issue unresolved. We would have to tend to it after our trek.

A video of this Kathmandu experience is at the following link: