Kathmandu 12th June 2006

I’ve had a good couple of days wandering around Kathmandu by myself taking in all the sights, but I fear that that’s all about to change.

Kathmandu is a city that is built to explore on foot, if you thought Olde London and Dublin have lots of alleyways and hidden passages to explore you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’ve wandered down countless dark alleyways which open up to splendid courtyards with ancient monuments / statues in them. Kathmandu is like an open-air museum; everywhere you go there are monuments, temples and statues. Some of the statues are no bigger than four inches tall and they are on the ground, the only way I can spot most of them is if someone has put flowers or other offerings down.

I spent yesterday wandering around Durbar Sq, which is where the city’s kings were crowned and ruled from. This is an area of the city that is in fact an open museum, at least for tourists who have to pay 200 Nepalese Rupees, but it’s worth every paisa. There are countless temples and shrines and there is also a giant bell and two great drums (on which a goat and a buffalo must be sacrificed twice a year). I managed to avoid most of the Sadu’s (“holy men”), as they never want to offer any spiritual advice as they are more concerned with trying to extract rupees from you, and had to tell about ten “guides” that I was perfectly capable of finding my way around the Square and that I needed to be alone to take photographs.

And take photographs I did. It was my first time out properly with my new lens and it was nice to have the option of changing the angle of view with the zoom after being stuck with a fixed lens for the last couple of months. I went a bit crazy and snapped anything that moved (or indeed stayed still) and ended up taking over four hundred photos (the joy of digital), most of them are “throw aways”, but there are a couple of good ones also.

I watched the Serbia Montenagro v Holland match in the evening which was fairly boring. I managed to catch the England v Paraguay game on Saturday, all I can say is “oh dear”. They should be capable of playing a lot better than they did, what a waste of Gerrards talents playing him in a holding midfield role. Looks like they’ll be out on penalties again…

I woke early this morning thanks to a lorry delivering and removing a skip, I had a look at my watch and it was 05:30 – what is wrong with these people? Yesterday I was woken up by the screams of school kids – it was 06:30 on a SUNDAY! I had planned to go to Durbar Sq today, no not that one, a different one! This one is in Patan, which is about five kilometres away. There are three main towns in the Kathmandu Valley – Kathmandu (funnily enough), Bhaktapur and Patan. Patan is also known as Lalitpur which means “City of Beauty” and it really is. I decided to walk there as it’s only five km’s away and when I left the hotel I noticed Rick and Mo’s Enfields parked beside my bike, they must have arrived last night, so I left a note on Mo’s bike telling her what room I was in.

A couple of minutes after leaving the hotel I came to a football pitch (which isn’t surprising as it’s been there every time I’ve gone that way), but today there were dozens of people doing martial arts. It was about 06:45!
I arrived in Patan at 08:10 and had a cup of chai and had a look at the map to see which direction I was going to explore first. First port of call was to see a Ganesh Temple. Ganesh has an elephants head on his human body, the story is that his old man (Shiva) came back from a long trip and found his wife in bed with a young man, so Shiva (as any jealous husband would do) chopped his head off. He never thought to stop and see if it was his son sharing his mum’s bed! His wife (Parvati) forced him to bring his son back to life, but he could only do so by giving him the head of the first living thing he saw. An elephant. I don’t know how he managed to aquire six arms though….

I then meandered to Durbar Sq. passing numerous temples, shrines etc and I explored lots of alleyways and found some superb courtyards, none of which prepared me for Durbar Sq. It is breathtaking, simply outstanding display of temples etc and it’s all there in the open in a living breathing (when the pollution isn’t too bad..) city. If you haven’t been to Kathmandu (or indeed Nepal) get here before the tourist boom starts.

I got back to the hotel just after 14:00 and I noticed that Dessie’s bike was parked in the hotel courtyard along with another Enfield I didn’t recognise. There was a note on my bike saying to meet them in Jazz Upstairs tonight. Maybe I won’t make it to Durbar Sq (yes, there is a third one) in Bhaktapur.

I bumped into Rick and Oliver around 18:00 and Rick informed me that Wolf had been in an accident and died. They had been at the police station all day trying to find out what had happened and as far as they knew, Wolf had been hit by a truck, the driver ran off and Wolf died in hospital about four hours later without regaining consciousness. In this part of the world it’s not unusual for the driver (involved in an accident) to reverse over you to make sure that you are dead, because they are responsible for all medical care until you recover. If you are disabled as a result of an accident they are responsible for all medical care etc. until you die. A driver has to pay 20,000 Nepal Rupees (£149 GBP) if you kill someone. Life is cheap. Oh yeah, the driver also runs away from an accident as it’s not uncommon for a baying mob to beat the driver senseless and many a driver dies as a result of the beating from the mob.

Rick and Mo were superb. They went well above and beyond the call. I helped out where I could, as did Des and Oliver (who had just bought the Enfield that I hadn’t recognised). Suzanne, Wolf’s girlfriend was back in Germany and we really wanted to organise everything before she returned to Nepal. We visited the main police station in Durbar Square (Kathmandu) and it was like stepping back in time. There were desks full of police officers and the desks were piled up with mountains of paper, there wasn’t a computer in sight and it would have been amazing to get some photo’s of it. Rick and Mo got to talk with the driver of the truck, turns out that he had been tracked down and was in the cells below. He was a youngish guy (about 24) and he says that Wolf was hit by a Nepalese motorcyclist and forced into the side of the truck. He ran as he didn’t want to get lynched, which is the reason that he was in the cells. Rick and Mo thought that the guy was genuine and the damage to Wolf’s bike (when we finally got to see it) would seem to support the guy’s story.