STEP OUT OF YOUR WORLD AND INTO BIJOUX, WHERE EVERYTHING HAS A STORY

Bhaktapur, Nepal

The truck next to our car belched once and a noxious cloud of diesel fumes exploded through the window. Muzzy turned his head to look at Kat and I in the backseat and he was a picture of the man with the exploding cigar, face covered in soot, eyes wide, expression of chagrin. Kat and I laughed in between gasps for breath, our eyes watering. With our scarves pulled over our noses, squeezed into the backseat, we were nothing more than four burning eyes peering into a haze of smog and traffic. The truck ahead of us was full of workers all gyrating to a popular tune, waving and laughing on the Friendship Highway leaving Kathmandu. As uncomfortable as I was, I was still in awe of the fact that I was merely days from the Tibetan border and this highway was the only road up through the valley. Having rejected the squalor of the street in front of Bodhnath, we persuaded the driver to take us all the way to Bhaktapur, some 14 kilometers east, the second largest city in Nepal. It was festival time. Maha Shivaratri was coming and Losar, Tibetan New Year, was two days off.

Once out of Kathmandu the city squalor yielded to farmland. The valley floor is rich, producing more than one crop a year, and we passed small settlements of brick houses, all going up, precariously built as if the first strong wind would blow them down. Surrounded by fields of wild mustard and cauliflower, they looked like small country houses anywhere except that the women wore saris. The entrance to Bhaktapur rose up abruptly on the side of the river and we were deposited, with our luggage, at the bus stop on the edge of town. Our driver tried to explain that no taxis were allowed any further. It was useless to try to ascertain how far we would have to go before we actually reached a place to stay. Best just to grab our packs and start walking.

Bhaktapur is an ancient city rising up from the north bank of the Hanumante River. It is the most Hindu of all Nepalese cities and allows no vehicular traffic in the old part of the city apart from a few small mini-vans used for school buses, some odd tractor devices and occasional delivery trucks. Because of this it is unpolluted, quiet and amiably walkable. We trudged down a narrow winding street in between tall buildings, and came to a square with lots of tourist shops and a small guard house where we were told that we had to pay to go any further. Lounging around in groups of two and three, clean-cut teenaged touts smiled in a most engaging manner. There was the usual language hassle at the window, "German? French?" "American." "Ahhhh…Amerika!" and then some broken conversation in English. The young boys eagerly volunteered to help interpret though they hardly understood much more English than the little man in the booth. We paid the 300 rupees to enter and then asked if that meant 300 rupees every time we came and went. "Bhaktapur very clean city, not dirty like Kathmandu. Money used to build statues and fix broken things. Very quiet, very clean, you stay! How long you stay?" We had intended to stay only a couple of days, but when the toll booth man explained via the boys that he would mark the back of our "ticket" with a date and we could come and go with no further fee, we had him put us down for a week. We took our handmade, beautifully printed paper ticket and entered the gated area to the old city.

Our "guides" led us to the Namaste Guest House on a street just behind Taumadi Tole, one of the three main squares around which Bhaktapur is built. A young man in a windbreaker and jogging pants came out to greet us. Narayan spoke good English, was very earnest and briefly explained that the rest of the house was in mourning. His grandfather had died a few days before, all the men were dressed in mourning white and he was the only one who could interact with the guests. With his large round eyes and slightly nervous manner, he was a rather serious landlord, but he eagerly led us up past the rooms that the family occupied on the second floor, to the top floor. The top two floors of the house accommodated tourists. At the very top, our rooms opened onto the flat roof and looked out over the city. It was clean, Spartan, and adequate for the price of $12, which Narayan assured us nervously was very fair, very fair. For $7, Kat's room was no bigger than a closet. When she stepped out the door and turned directly to the right, she was in her bathroom…a nice tiled squat toilet and shower affair. Our room was spacious with windows facing the verandah rooftop. To reach our toilet and shower, we exited a small door next to our beds and walked along a narrow balcony. The sink was at one end, toilet and shower at the other. It was precarious. I had the feeling that the whole arrangement would collapse if more than one person stood out there. It listed toward the maze of backyards below. Until we actually closed the door to the small room with the shower and toilet, we were right out in the open, in view of the neighbors. When we took a shower, it was imperative to remove the toilet paper first. The showerhead emptied right over the toilet bowl. All of this coupled with my inability to figure out the hot water system led to a love-hate relationship with this bathroom. I could write an entire book on the bathrooms of Asia. But, the room was lovely and the beds fair to good. I realized why the guidebooks suggested south facing windows. I slept in long johns and socks most of the time I was in Nepal. South facing windows meant maximum exposure to the sun, important since none of the rooms we stayed in had heat. We were the only occupants on this floor, and we freely scuttled back and forth to one another's rooms. Kat's monastic cell allowed her to do little more than lie on her bed when she was in there, but she loved that eccentricity. It's one window looked directly out at the Himalayas. How could you beat that?

The view from the rooftop was wonderful. When the valley haze, the milk fog, cleared we could see the Himalayan foothills. The top of the Nayatapola, the tallest temple in Nepal, dedicated to the goddess Laxmi floated illusively through the maze of wires precariously attached like huge rat's nests to a tall pole. Across the street, a beautifully carved window frame outlined a man with his child. He smiled at us and brought the baby's hands up in a "namaste" greeting. All up and down the street shadows moved across the windows of the houses. Ancient old crones in saris with shawls draped over their heads peered down at the street below, called to vendors, talked to neighbors, fed pigeons, bounced small children in their laps or just watched the constant parade of life. Children ran through the streets rolling old tires, chasing each other, squealing with laughter and throwing water balloons. Shopkeepers squatted outside their stores smoking. Women stopped to look over merchandise and visit. And occasionally a tourist would wander by with a necklace of cameras, surrounded by several small children and earnest young "guides". After a day or two, with our laundry hanging from the line stretched across a corner of the rooftop we felt like part of the neighborhood.

Walking to the corner from the Namaste, we turned onto the main roadway, a wide bricked path that meandered past shops and houses in a graceful curve out into Taumadhi Tole. To the left was Bhairabnath Temple where a constant stream of women left offerings of oil, flowers, and incense, reaching down to ring the bell and smear tika paste on their foreheads or in the part of their hair. There was a large raised platform area to one side where children played, people sat talking and smoking and old men lay in the sun. Small shops and cafes were arranged around the remaining two sides of the square. Narrow lanes led off like the spokes of a wheel, continuing their gentle incline toward the river. We wandered down one of these and stopped at the shop of a basket vendor. Huge baskets were stacked in orderly piles. The largest ones, dokka, attached with a band around the forehead and balanced on the back and hip and were used to carry heavy loads. Looking back up toward the square, a woman was bathing at an open water faucet, deftly changing her sari and leaning over to wash her long black hair then twisting it into a bun. When she was finished she filled two enormous brass jugs. Placing one on her head and the other on her hip, she moved off up the hill.

We continued down a narrow alley with buildings towering overhead. There was brick everywhere. We had passed several small brick factories in the valley on our way from Kathmandu. Bhaktapur was in a state of rebuilding, having been destroyed by earthquakes twice, once in the 30's and again in the 1950's. The German government poured money into restoration projects for temples, dwellings, sculpture and carving, and repair of the underground reservoirs that once held an abundant water supply for the city. The reservoirs were still in use throughout the city, though they were not nearly as lush as they had been. The huge greenish pools and deep brick and stone grottoes where people came to bathe were only a shadow of the magnificent system of waterworks that was once the pride of this ancient medieval city. The alley finally opened out into Potters Square where a sea of black and red clay pots lay drying on a carpet of straw. Old men and women were busy working at potter's wheels. They seemed perplexed that we were there and several held up their hands to protest being photographed. We were alone, without any other tourists and not with a tour group. Putting the camera away we moved off toward the main part of town. On the way we passed three old women on a small brick porch. One was leaning against the wall dozing with her skirt pulled up past her knees, warming herself in the early spring sun. By her dress I could see she was Tamang. Her hand was tucked into a voluminous belt wrapped around the waist of her sari. These belts serve as both purse and shopping bag. A few feet away an old man in traditional Nepali pants, shirt and topi, the indigenous Nepali hat, was smoking a huge wooden water pipe. For a moment I was in a National Geographic magazine, moving back in time.

Durga