Would the Real Durbar Square Please Stand Up?

25.05.09 - We got a taxi early from Kathmandu to Patan and checked into Cafe de Patan, well placed about ten seconds from Durbar Square.

Unfortunately we arrived in some pretty persistent rain, which we thought in the usual Nepalese style would settle down after a while. It didn't. Therefore after going to our room (and killing a cockroach, which I swear are following us - we killed three in Bandipur!), we headed out to the square in the rain. Sans raincoats or umbrellas.

Pretty soon we were harassed by a "student" who didn't want to be a guide but only to practise his English, which seemed to consist of an incredibly well rehearsed guide-like patter. To rid ourselves from him, we headed into the amazing Patan Museum. We spent about five hours there, including time spent for lunch. It is probably the best museum we've been to in the whole of travelling, with incredibly well thought out introductions to religion, recurrent characters, identifying poses and gestures and very thorough accompanying literature. In actual English as well rather than the pigeon English which plagues some museums.

After a great few hours and great lunch, it was still absolutely pouring with no sign of stopping any time soon. We decided that we would head out later when the rain stopped, as I was still feeling pretty rough anyway. The rain didn't stop so we didn't leave the hostel but instead decided to look around first thing in the morning.

We got up at 6am and it was still raining. Unbelievable! So we looked around the square in the rain. Whilst I feel the conditions weren't ideal to appreciate it, it was (in my opinion) one hundred times more impressive and atmospheric than Kathmandu's Durbar Square. For one thing it is quieter, with much less traffic of both the vehicular and people sort running through the middle. For another, the buildings are a bit more stylistically varied from each other, rather than being more similar traditional Newari architecture.

Despite the rain, we spent three sodden hours looking around the square. We also headed off to take in the Golden Temple, which was an attractive Buddhist temple just a few minutes walk away from the square. I liked it because the artwork was so interesting, they had a resident tortoise and also we saw the child monk who presides over the temple. My guidebook said he must be around twelve but I thought he looked more like 8, tiny with his shaved head and monk's robes on.

After that we checked out and headed back to Kathmandu to do more admin (yawn!)

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