First, I'll just touch on a slight incident from last night.
Oops.
So yeah, I sat down on my bed and one of slats clean snapped in half. Too many mo-mos for this girl. Luckily when we told the guest house about it they were really cool and they told us that the previous three Turkish people staying in the room had been, ahem, very active. I can only assume they did a lot of dancing on the bed.
But on with the good stuff, it's been a long busy day so I'll try to keep it entertaining.
Friday night we decided to see some of the major attractions in Kathmandu and decided Durbar Square would be a great place to start, however our taxi driver though differently and dropped us off somewhere totally different. Once we'd paid the money to get in we realised we were actually at Narayanhity Royal Palace Museum, the site of a huge massacre in 2001. What better place to spend Valentines day, am I right?!
Nepal has had a very turbulent history in regards to monarchy and power and only recently have things settled. Now I'm no expert in the full story of the Nepalese royal family so for now I'll just summarise what happened at this particular site. On June 1st 2001 in the palace grounds, the heir to the throne, Prince Dipendra, is believed to have killed 9 members of his own family and himself, including the king and the queen. The prince survived and became king, however died 3 days later, never waking up from his coma. After his death, his brother, Gyanendra, became king. Very Game of Thrones.
This isn't the only massacre in Nepalese history, but as there is so much to cover I'll save that for another time.
(Like quite a few places in Kathmandu you weren't allowed to take any photos, so you'll just have to picture the palace yourself. Think lots of taxidermy and 60's style interiors and you'll have a general idea.)
Just down the road from Narayanhity Royal Palace is the Garden of Dreams which sounded lovely but in reality was full of smitten couples. Really beautiful place, really bad day to go. The gardens are actually very beautiful and it was nice to relax in the middle of such a busy and dirty city. There was a moment when I almost had to step in and save the day as a small child had fallen into a pond, but fortunately someone got there quicker than I did. I spent the rest of the time trying to get chipmunks to come over by throwing pieces of croissant that I'd taken from breakfast. It seems chipmunks prefer cheese Lays to croissant, for future reference.
(All my photos from here are currently on another camera so will update in due time, but I'm sure you know what smug couples look like)
From the Garden of Dreams we were going to walk down to the real Durbar Square but decided now was the best time to experiment with rickshaws. Oh. My. Gosh. This is where I turned into a huge wimp and was clinging to SJ for dear life. Being in a taxi is bad enough but being on the back of a blooming rickshaw is far, far worse. The roads of Kathmandu (and I imagine all of Nepal) are just not designed for bicycles.
Obviously this was before we set off.
Now I'm no history teacher so I'll go to my good friend Wikipedia for a short description of what Durbar Square actually is:
Kathmandu Durbar Square is the plaza in front of the old royal palace of the then Kathmandu Kingdom. It is one of three Durbar (royal palace) Squares in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, all of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The Durbar Square is surrounded with spectacular architecture and vividly showcases the skills of the Newarartists and craftsmen over several centuries. The royal palace was originally at Dattaraya square and was later moved to the Durbar square location.[1]
The Kathmandu Durbar Square holds the palaces of the Malla and Shah kings who ruled over the city. Along with these palaces, the square surrounds quadrangles revealing courtyards and temples. It is known as Hanuman Dhoka Durbar Square, a name derived from a statue of Hanuman, the monkey devotee of Lord Ram, at the entrance of the palace.
Today, Durbar Sqaure was also host to a market organised by a women's organisation. To any of the guys from my Tajik programme, it was very much like our business fair but slap bang in the middle of a tourist attraction. After a mooch around the stalls we went to the museum section of the square which was absolute bliss in comparison to the busy entrance area full of guys trying to offer themselves as guides and even one man who offered 'the best night of your life' in exchange for just $1000. Who could resist?
Women Entrepreneur Handicraft Fair- always on the job.
The museum was a big courtyard with buildings on every side and a 9 storey tower containing a very ricketey staircase which all of a sudden made incredibly afraid of heights. It really was a very wimpy day. The views from the top were great albeit restricted. After the tower we went to the museum which was interesting but a little over the top. There really is only so much you can say about a king, not to mention every single one of his belongings being on show too. None the less there were some wonderful things on show and it was great to see a royal wearing sunglasses in almost every one of their publicity photos.
All along the square there were gurkhas, which offered a PERFECT photo opportunity. Naturally I couldn't resist and this guy is my favourite because he was so damn smiley!
My gurhka valentine.
The nine storey tower.
The next part of the day was by far one of the most surreal moments of my life. At 4pm they were going to be bringing out the LIVING GODDESS. I had only heard about the Living Goddess, Kumari, briefly before but the reality was just bizarre. The tradition of having a Kumari comes from the 1700's and a young girl is chosen when she is 3 years old and is considered to be an incarnation of the goddess Durga. The Kumari then spends all of her years up until puberty in the Kumari house being worshipped. She is allowed to leave the premises 13 times a year but isn't allowed to touch the floor so gets carried everywhere. Doesn't sound too shabby to me.
At 4 we crowded into a little courtyard to get a glimpse of her. It was all very exciting and as soon as she appeared at the window there were gasps and cheers. In reality it was a very young girl wearing some very lovely silk PJs wearing an awful lot of makeup. She came to the window, looked around and then left. It was very, very bizarre.
You're not allowed to take photos of the Kumari and there were threats from the security that they would break your camera if you did, so here's a photo from the web. I don't know if this is the one I saw but you get the picture, so to speak.
At the side of Durbar Sqaure is Freak Street, one of the popular haunts of many hippie backpackers in days gone by but now mostly just another tourist spot. From here we walked along the Kingsway and I had a case of Truly Bad Maths, asking a guy if he would do 3 for RS100 on DVDs that only cost RS30 each anyway. I blame tiredness.
I'm not entirely sure what this vehicle is but it sure looks good.
The day ended back at one of my favourite haunts, Nema Cafe, with some buffalo mo-mos and a hot lemon and honey. Fortunately my bed has now been repaired and we have electricity tonight (yay!!) so I'll be living the rock'n'roll lifestyle watching a movie and eating Oreo's.
Lizzie x
Edit: literally as soon as I finished writing this the electricity went off. I guess it'll just be the Oreo's on their own then.
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