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Roads less traveled in Kathmandu

by Diana Reynolds Roome

Editor's Note: Diana Reynolds Roome, a Mountain View resident and longtime contributor to the Voice, has been traveling in India and Nepal, retracing steps she took there many years ago. In this installment, Roome describes the many ways things have changed in Nepal.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Flying north over the Indian border into Nepal, I'm overwhelmed by the sudden sight of the vast Himalayan mountains shimmering against a deep blue sky. So formidable, they look ethereal too, with small clouds floating far below their dazzling white peaks.

The plane dips on approach to the Kathmandu Valley, giving me a new view of the forested and meticulously terraced hills I drove across in the late 1960s. From those hills I first saw Kathmandu, a medieval city of pagodas, temples, shrines and palaces — and fell in love in an instant. The day after that first landing, I rented a bike and rode around knocking on doors until I found a job as a teacher of English — in a school run by an ex-princess (yes, really).

Returning here almost four decades later has been a delight and a shock. It's almost impossible to believe Kathmandu is the same city I once knew. I tried following routes I remembered, but it seems that everything has vanished without a trace — my school just outside Patan (the neighboring town), the shrine to Siva outside its gate, the field of wild bulls that I crossed daily, and (not surprisingly) the bus stop with the lady selling papayas and single cigarettes from her stall on the ground.

Even the road I used to take is no longer there. Since I lived here, the country's population has leaped from 8 million to 26 million, so it's hardly surprising that new buildings, roads and traffic dominate the scene instead of fields, cows, temples and rickshaws. Pollution has obscured the view of snow-covered peaks that made me wobble in amazement as I biked between my school and town.

And instead of wandering among the Nepali townspeople and country folk selling their produce, now I can barely move for tourists and stallholders touting their wares. I shouldn't complain, because visitors, especially climbers, bring much-needed income to this country, which is one of the poorest in the world. When I paid 150 rupees (about $2) for a Nepali embroidered tablecloth, the vendor touched the money to his lips and then his forehead in a gesture of thankfulness. The gratitude wasn't for me — but probably for Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of good fortune.

I walked a short way out of town to visit Swayambunath, an ancient Buddhist temple on a high hill. The huge, curving Buddha-eyes on the stupa, or shrine — including the third eye that looks like a question mark but is in fact an ek, or number one, in Nepali — gaze out in all four directions over the valley. Prayer flags flutter everywhere, bringing a sense of peace and timelessness.

Nobody really knows when Swayambhunath was built (historians' best guess is around 460 A.D.), but Buddhists believe the temple appeared on a hill that rose up spontaneously after the lake that once filled the valley was drained. Geologists have their explanations for this, but the story here is that the Bodhisattva Manjushri drained the lake after raising his mighty sword and cleaving through the mountains where water now rushes through the Chobar Gorge. I once visited the gorge with the kids from my school, and still have a photo of myself sitting on a rock, incongruously playing a violin.

The main temple at Chobar, built in the 15th century, celebrates both the red-faced Hindu deity Macchendranath and the Buddha, whose image appears six times. Clearly, there's no problem with religious coexistence here.

Just for good measure, the temple also celebrates marriage, and to prove it, the outside is covered with hundreds of pots and pans nailed on to the exterior by newlyweds hoping to insure a harmonious married life. I'm not sure which deity bestows that — but what matters is that there's a god who can, as long as you do the right thing. And it seems that people do: Shrines and temples everywhere are abuzz, as people make offerings and light butter lamps. It's all in a day's work.

Speaking of harmony, a historic peace accord was signed on the night I traveled out of town to see the sunrise over the Himalayas. The sun never showed (the hillside village of Nagarkot where I stayed was enveloped in cloud), but Nepal's prime minister and the Maoist rebel leader apparently showed up to ratify a long-negotiated agreement that aims to usher in a multi-party parliamentary system. After 10 years of kidnappings and killings by Maoists rebels, and a grim period last year when a despotic king closed down parliament and then cut off communications to the outside world, Nepal — the world's only Hindu kingdom, though the Buddha was also born here — has managed to wrest back its democracy.

Sadly, this may barely register to the world outside. Even the Nepalis themselves are making no big fuss about it. They've seen too many agreements come and go. Meanwhile, they're smiling — but then, as I well remember, Nepalis have always smiled a lot.