Monks, Monasteries, and Momos

Asia
December 12th 2009

Published: December 12th 2009

Edit Blog Post

HannahLewis

rafting night out

the girls

On from Pokhara.
Durks had departed to go to Mumbai to begin his teaching course, and after spending a few more days in Pokhara planning our forward travel and eating dinner with our rafting buddies we took a 8 hr bus journey to Kathmandu. The driver of this bus was a maniac and we breathed a sigh of relief when we were able to disembark.

We decided to go to "Freak Street" an old hippy hangout right next to Durbar Square as opposed to the more touristy Thamel Area. But our late arrival into town meant we had some difficulty finding a room, and eventually settled for a good priced but very damp and dank smelly room. I think this brought on Lewi's hayfever which was pretty terrible, using rolls and rolls of toilet roll for his unstoppable nose!

That evening we ventured out to Durbar Square and took in the impressive mixture of Hindu Temples, Royal Palace and Thai Style Pagodas which are crammed into the relatively small area, and the street sellers with all their fruit and veg wares and gift items sat on the available floor space who call to you to "look look".
We ate

rafting night out

everyone

very cheaply tonight as we tasted the many delights of Kathmandus Street Food. The most delicious Momo's; almost like dumplings, stuffed with spiced vegetables and served with a hot sauce; Potato Curry on a bed of crushed samosa; and egg rolls - omlette with chapatti and onion salad in the middle; oh and Namkeen; puffed rice, nuts, corriander and chilli a tasty snack.

After a dreadful nights sleep for Lewi especially, we left the room as early as possible and had a cup of chai at Mama's Chai Shop. This was a tiny stall where 'Mama' (uncle) sits and brews the best chai we've tasted yet for 8 Rs a cup. feeling slightly better for the tea, we went a watched the spectacle of the Kumari (the Living Godess). One of the buildings on Durbar Square is the Kumari Chowk (her residency) and at 10 o clock she makes and appearance at the window. We learnt that the Kumari is chosen at the age of 2 for possessing such qualities as having eyelashes like a cow and showing no fear. The current Kumari is now 4 yrs old. It was a very strange custom and one couldn't help but

Dhan at Hotel Deep Oasis

The wonderful and very friendly Dhan

feel sorry for the poor little girl who cannot leave the residency and is treated like a godess until she reaches pubity when she is cast out. Strange.

After a successful trip to the post office - battery recieved no problem - we took a long walk through the bustling market areas of Kathmandu, selling everything from metal serving spoons to insense to coconuts and pigs feet, out to the Swayambuhu temple (otherwise known as the Monkey temple). This was an enormous complex of buddist stupas, and hindu temples, statues and hundreds of fluttering prayer flags. It was beautiful and living amongst all this were thousands of monkeys, to some people more interesting than the temples! The walk to get here had been long and the flight of stairs to climb to the top was comparable to chomrong, so we were pretty tired and when we were templed out we went to catch a microbus back to durbar square. What an experience that was...about 20 people crammed into a 7 seater vehicle. Another chai with Mama was needed and enjoyed.

We had read about the Buddist community of Boudha just 20 mins from Kathmandu, and so hoping to

Kathmandu

street food

escape the hayfever we switched locations. We had a beauitful room at the lotus guesthouse and Lewi started to feel less ill instantly. The guesthouse was set in the grounds of a monastry and so we could hear the sounds of the music of chanting monks, booming drums, gongs and the almost oboe like horns they played, at all times of the day and night.We really felt like we were somewhere completely away from Kathmandu and even that we had left Nepal and gone to Tibet. The Tibetean people were really friendly and we sampled some traditonal tibetean food (obviously momos, but also thukpa, and tibeatean bread).

One afternoon as we wandered around the back streets we walked into the courtyard of a monastry, and immediately a group of young student monks (clad all in red and orange), surrounded us and insisted that we join them in one of their lessons. It was a very interesting experience, a class of 20 8-13 yr olds were learning chinese, tibeatean, nepali and english. Such clever and devoted children. And they have to learn the scripture of monkhood by heart too which is over 100 pages and is spoken at top speed

mama's chai shop

in a low monotone pitch. The children seemed really pleased to have us there to practice their english with and were showing off all their drawings and text books. One of the drawings was a cartoon of china opressing tibet and was very evokative, they seemed much older than their years.

As the sun sets all the people of Boudha gather at the Stupa which dominates the central circular space and walk around it in a clockwise motion, spinning all the prayer wheels around the outside of the building as they go. We joined them in this act and it was a calming and spirrtual (if a little dizzying) ritual to be part of and observe.

Sad to leave this friendly community but excited for the next installment of the journey we caught a bus to Karkrabitta, 16 hrs later we were crossing the border back to India!

Additional photos below

Photos: 18, Displayed: 18