By Dan
Wednesday 23rd of March 2017
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Riiiiicheeeeeellle! Happy Birthday to you!
Being Richelle’s birthday it required something a little more special than just walking around Kathmandu. So we planned a day trip to Bhaktapur, an ancient town of temples and a UNESCO world heritage site. I sang happy birthday to Richelle over breakfast as she blew on her boiling tea and we made our way to the bus stop. After the day before’s experience, there was no way were luxuriating in a taxi. We also had to tighten our belts as we’d blown our budget, but no problem, the bus was only 30 cents!
We’d been told the public bus experience in Kathmandu is abhorrent and to be avoided at all costs, but with our spring back in our steps nothing was going to deter us. We joined the bus to Bhaktapur and danced to the blasting local music the whole 60 minutes there.
Like all spontaneous adventurers, we jumped off the bus a stop early to check out the sacred pools on the outskirts of the town. Sacred in that they are said to possess the healing powers of the gods. Judging by the water’s viscosity, healing could easily be replaced with killing. So it was alarming to see people bathing and washing at the far end of one the pools. But this is their life. Even with the knowledge of the water’s toxicity they wouldn’t alter their behaviour. This is the best (and the only) choice they have.
We slowly meandered through the town, stopping at the various rest stops that are scattered throughout. There are 52 such places around the city all for resting and catching up with neighbours. The Nepalese are fantastic resters. We finally reached Bhaktapur’s Durbar Square, the UNESCO world heritage site, another collection of temples, these ones hardly affected by the earthquake and much bigger and more abundant than those in Kathmandu.
It seemed essential to hire another guide to get us through. Another born and bred local, who falls in our category of Legend, but not because of his unfaltering positivity but because of his sheer ambition. His name was Promise, and when he put his mind to something he did it. Like learning a language, 9 of which he now speaks fluently, or setting up a local orphanage, which he runs in between tours of the tour. Or perhaps it's his thirst for tourism, and how he hopes to one day soon leave his city, joining the rank of tourist to explore the world for himself.
Promise taught us about Bhaktapur and why it was so special (and entry to the Durbar Square cost so much damn money). He recounted a story about the first king of Kathmandu and a competition between his two brothers both also kings, one of whom lived in Bhaktapur. The contest was to build the finest Durbar Square in the nation.
Bhaktapur was the clear winner. Causing the king of Kathmandu to invade his two brothers' regions and once and for all unite the country of Nepal.
For an hour we listened to Promise lovingly talk about the religious city, how it boasted the tallest pagoda in Nepal and how the finest pottery was created right there in the streets by some of Nepal’s finest craftsmen. He told of devotees worshipping the gods day in and day out, and how he didn't believe in any of it. His own religion being just that, his own religion. His main commandment being "an apple never gives the taste of lemon".
The factory was very traditional, without any of the modern printing processes, with old print presses, carved block plates and colourful dyes fermenting in bathtubs. Without a guide, one would easily be lost to the world, a paper prisoner forever doomed to wander the dark windowless corridors. At least until one of the twenty paper workers kicked you out the next day. We purchased a notebook for Richelle and left our leatherbound friend to his factory and piles of books, something he wasn’t complaining about.
A storm quickly swept over the valley as we raced back to the bus stop, all too aware of the tempest we’d been caught in a couple of nights before. For a mere sixty cents we were on our way back to Kathmandu, where we continued the birthday bonanza and bought our trekking poles for four dollars. Content with the days plundering, there were just two things left to do.
Buy cake and eat it.