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1996
NEPAL - Around the world
Bec2004-09-20 12:19:25
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KATHMANDU
The Capital Guest House was my base of operations in the region, a room with bath cost only 4 US$ and the food was very good. This is where I met Khogen Pun who showed me around Pokhara when I came back from Tibet.
For years I had been thinking of Nepal for its mountains and of Kathmandu for its marijuana saturated cafes, I was quite unprepared to discover a very religious community worshipping both Tantric Buddhist deities and a variety of Hindu gods in an incredible number of temples of all sizes, each more beautiful than the other.
This colourful sadhu made a gesture of peace or of blessing to me as he sat in the doorway of the small white temple, you can see in the previous photo, in front of the large 17th century Maju Deval temple to the Hindu god Shiva in Kathmandu's Durbar Square (Palace Square).
There are no hippies left in their past haunts on Freak Street now that their culture has dissapeared from the face of the earth (except in the museum like village of Nimbin in Australia). How disapointing, it didn't even smell of pot!
The Kotilingeshwar 16th century temple in the foreground and the Mahavishnu temple next to it, respectively honour Shiva and Vishnu, both Hindu deities.
You would probably quit looking if I post too many temple pictures so here is a street scene for a change. This was taken looking north on Kel Tole, a busy place with a variety of small shops selling everything from large copper pots (on the left), to clothes and incence.
Small Shiva temple built by king Pratap Malla in 1667 in the center of Rani Pokhari (Queen's Pond) to console her over the loss of their son trampled by an elephant.
PATAN
Patan and Bhaktapur are neighbour cities to Kathmandu, Patan immediately to the south and Bhaktapur a little further to the east. The three cities took turns at serving
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See photographs from:
Nepal Gallery
