And so I blog.
Yesterday was our afternoon and evening in Bhaktapur! And it was breathtaking. We are staying at a hotel up on a hill run by a Nepali man and a man from Milan, Italy. So the restaurant serves a large menu of both Nepali and Italian food. After eating basic Nepali food for two weeks you can guess what Tyler has been eating! The food here is cheap, too. We got lasagna and pizza for $3.50 each. There aren't many others staying in the hotel. It's offseason. But we did meet a woman from New York last night at dinner who comes here every year because she helps fund various projects here, including an orphanage for deaf children. She's a photographer in Manhattan.
Tyler and his beloved Italian food.
My traditional Nepali plate of daal (curry) veggies, greens, yogurt, rice and bread. Amazing!!
In the afternoon we headed down into town. The city of Bhaktapur is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Since we were a long walk away from it, the hotel owner offered to take us by none other than motorcycles!
When we got to the above entrance, we had to pay an entry
fee and then we began walking through the streets by ourselves, completely in
awe. Bhaktapur was founded in the 9th century and was run by a royal family. It was
the largest of the three Newa (a local tribe) kingdoms of the
Kathmandu Valley, and was the capital of Nepal during the great
"Malla" Kingdom until the second half of the 15th century. Today it
is the third largest city in the Kathmandu Valley with a population of
more than 300,000, of which the vast majority are still Newars.
These posts are extremely old and were used to tie the animals to during ancient sacrifices.
A guy came up to us in the Square and wanted to be our tour guide. His name is Lok and he's from here.
The royal family used to bathe here after worshipping at the Hindu temple next door. We weren't allowed in the Hindu temple since we're not Hindu but got to look inside.
Outside the Hindu temple.
I took dog pictures. There were a lot of them! Tyler laughed every time I said, "Wait! I need a picture of this dog!" I might miss Archie...the condition of some of the dogs made me emotional though. I saw a few with horrific skin conditions. Many eating trash. One was at the top of some temple steps just shivering. I thought of how I would let Archie snuggle under my blankets if he was shivering...
These dried leaves hang across some doors to a home. They are used to protect it.
At Potter Square. You can see the pottery wheel below and some drying pots above.
Guy carrying clay.
The firing of the pots. It takes 3-4 days.
One of the tallest temples in Nepal.
We climbed up it.
Our last stop on our tour from Lok was a a painting school, the Lama Thanka Centre (School of Thanks Painting). A Thanka is a painted or embroidered Buddhist banner which hung in a monestary or a family alter and was carried by lamas in ceremonial processions. Above you can see some of the artwork one of the instructors showed us. They have three levels of artists that produce work there: student, intermediate and master. We ended up buying one from the intermediate level. It is a piece of the Life of Buddha. In the picture it's the one with a piece of paper on it. It took about a month to be painted.
That large painting is called a Mandala, which is a Tantric meditation device. It literally means circle. This particular design was by the current Dahli Lama.
After we got our painting, the instructor actually drove us back to our hotel with a portable credit card machine so we could pay him for it! This was some scenery as we drove up the hill:
We arrived around sunset and went up to the rooftop for the view.
On a final note, we asked one of the employees at the hotel how to say "thank you" in Nepalese. He said that most often, nothing is said at all. But a smile is what says it. He says that in Nepal, a smile is everything.
I think that says a lot about a country.
Namaste.
