Exploring Kathmandu

So Kathmandu has a lot of smells in the heat, and is a pretty damn polluted city, but it still has some amazing sights to see! 

Durbar Square is the main hub of temples in the city and palaces.  It is amazing the abundance of temples, but apparently it is not the best Durbar Square in the valley, I think it is 3rd, with Patan 2nd and Bhaktapur 3rd.  There is a palace where a living Goddess lives, the Kumari, who is a reincarnation in a 6 year old girl.  It's pretty interesting to hear about but obviously something we would never ever see in the UK.  She came to the window where she looks over her worshipers so we saw here highly made up face and elaborate clothing, but photos are forbidden. 

Wandering the streets is interesting in itself, especially when you get out of Thamel the tourist area.  There are so many street sellers and little shops and every 2nd corner you come across a small (or sometimes large) Hindu Temple or Buddhist Stupa. People are walking around carrying the most amazing loads on their heads and often a cow will just casually saunter past or maybe a few chickens will appear!

We have been to one of the largest Buddhist Stupas in Nepal (or the largest?) - Bodhnath Stupa.  It was such a place of tranquility with prayer flags hanging everywhere waving in the breeze.  I found it a nice thought that when these move they are meant to send the prayers on into the sky, to travel on.  We went in the evening and had dinner in a cafe overlooking the stupa, where we tried traditional Tibetan tea - Buttersalt tea.......it's not something I'll be having again but it was worth a try, it tastes oddly of the left over dregs when you make plain buttery pasta!!  We watched people doing their evening worship by circumnavigating the stupa in a clockwise direction and spinning prayer wheels.  We also managed to enter a Buddhist monastery or gompa and be blessed by the monks and their lama.  We joined in the chanting of mantras while holding incense sticks and then the lama chanted blessings while we sat and put a scarf around our necks and basically hit us on our heads with a prayer book!   

The next exploration will take us further into the kathmandu valley and away from the hubbub of kathmandu!