Nepal: This Taxi is Probably Almost as Old as Me!

For April 3rd

After spending the first full day with just Renee, this was the day the others would start rolling into town.  My friend Amy was set to arrive in the morning, and our other travel companion, a guy unrelated to the rest of the group by the name of Louie, was set to arrive in the evening.  Renee and I decided we’d plan to go out on our own for the morning, and hopefully by the time we finished our ramblings, Amy would have arrived.

After some brief research, we settled on the Kathmandu suburb of Kirtipur.  It wasn’t exactly brimming with tourists, which made it a bit of a unique visit.  Kirtipur is up in the Himalayan foothills and from it, you look down over the Kathmandu Valley.  If the skies were clear and not smog-filled, we probably would have had some amazing views of the Himalayas.  Unlike the bustling streets of Kathmandu, Kirtipur was extremely calm and not filled with traffic.  We took a taxi there and the driver didn’t exactly seem to be thrilled at having to take us up the steep streets of Kirtipur, but he did.

Our first visit was the Bagh Bhairab Temple, a Hindu temple that is somewhere around 500 years old, give or take.  As we walked into the temple grounds a man approached us and started explaining the temple’s history.  Renee and I kind of looked at each other and decided, eh, whatever, he can be our tour guide if he wants.  He told us that inside the temple, women were in the process of doing an animal sacrifice, but only Hindus could enter, which I was totally fine with.  I really didn’t need to see an animal sacrifice.  As we walked around the back side of the temple there was a great view of the city below us…and of a goat that probably wasn’t going to see sunset.

Bagh Bhairab Temple

From Bagh Bhairab our guide led us through the (very clean) streets of Kirtipur to Uma Maheshwar temple.  This temple is located on one of the highest hills in the town and the view from up there is amazing!  We climbed up the stairs of the temple, past two elephants.  Like many of the other temples we’d seen so far in Nepal, this one also had some beautiful wood carvings.

Uma Maheshwar and it's elephants

From Uma Maheshwar, we followed our guide through the streets past some buildings that he pointed out as Newar structures.  He said you could tell because of the fancy windows.  The buildings were very old.  He was saying that the newer buildings made of concrete tended to be colder in the winter and hotter in the summer than the old Newar buildings.  However, some of those Newar buildings definitely looked like they might not stand much longer without intervention.  500+ years might be near the end of their lifespan.  By the way, Newars are an ethnic group in Nepal, in the same way that the Sherpa, the Tibetans, and the Chhetri are.

The Newari windows our guide was telling us about.  They don't make them like that anymore.

Our last stop with our tour guide was the Chilancho Stupa.  There was one big stupa in the middle, with 4 smaller ones located at the corners.  It too was located up on a hill in the town.  After he explained some of the finer points of the stupa, we each gave him 1000 Nepali rupees and said thanks for his time.  He headed off and we backtracked a bit to get to our next destination, the Kirtipur Gumba, which ended up being closed.

Chilancho Stupa

When our attempt to see the Gumba was foiled, we rerouted to go to a suspension bridge that was supposed to have a great view of the city.  We did manage to find the suspension bridge and it did have neat views, and would have had even neater views if not for the smog.  After admiring the view from up high in Kirtipur, we headed towards a main street where we figured we could find a taxi to take us back to the Thamel district.  And the taxi we found was certainly an old one.  It had been a while since I last saw roll up windows, and the dash was definitely something from the 90s, at least.  But we managed to get back to Thamel where we met up with Amy, finally!