Discoveries of the week: Thamel, Ram Gumba, Patan Swayambhunath

This week we continued with our Nepali classes which sometimes start to sound just like Chinese to us. By now, besides introduction we have already learnt a bit about shopping, food names, how to bargain and how to talk with a taxi driver. I find it very interesting: it’s another challenge to learn a bit of a language like this.

Besides the lessons and romantic nights spent talking by candlelight (in the lack of electricity), we also got to see some of Kathmandu and take part in some cultural events this week.

One day for example we walked to Thamel, which is one of the most touristic area of Kathmandu. It’s a really vibrating place full of shops, bazaars and bars. It took quite a long time to walk there from the office (about 1 hour), but I think we are pretty much getting used to walking a lot, and also, walking gave us a chance to discover the city a bit and bump into amazing places that we didn’t even know about. For example we found a huge market hidden under some kind of tents that was full of amazingly beautiful materials for kurtas and saris (traditional Nepali dresses). It was just like being in a tale again!

Another day, it just turned out that it was festival: it was the day of Ram Navami festival on which Nepalese people celebrate the birth of Lord Ram, who is the seventh incarnation of Lord Vishnu. For this event after Nepalese classes we went together to a temple for Ram (Ram Gumba), where a huge crowd gathered. After taking off our shoes and taking a long path under like tents, we reached the temple itself. Walking around the temple on one side of it we could see a stage set up, lots of Nepalese people sitting in front of it and singing, while some elder ones were dancing in front of the stage, too... Then inside the temple there was a big crowd, with a highly decorated front part where I think the people could bring their offers. On the other side of the temple there were people giving us tikka (the red thing on your forehead which means blessing) and also cute children coming up to us, asking for our names and all that. It was really an amazing experience! It was also on this today that we got to try out the tempo (or tuk-tuk) which are little local buses that you just have to wave to so that it stops for you and in which there are like 15 people sitting at a place that at home would be suitable maybe for 8... It’s really-really funny! Getting off from it works just about the same way: you just have to knock on the top of the tempo to make it stop. 

Again, on another free afternoon we decided to walk to Patan which is an area of Kathmandu full of temples – both with Buddhist and Hinduist ones. During this trip we found out that typical Buddhist temples are always white with stupas, golden top with strings of flags hanging from it – which’s purpose is that wind can blow away all problems and blow blessing to the people instead. At the same time, Hinduist temples are all carved from wood usually with a shape that reminds us Chinese and Japanese architecture – but as we got to know: it’s more ancient than those. In one of the Buddhist temples we even made some little friends – a 14 year old boy and his neighbours and friends – who explained us a lot about the history of the temple and with whom we had a very interesting conversation for example about the place of religions in different cultures. It’s very interesting how easy it is to get in touch with people here compared to how it works in Europe. Honestly first I didn’t trust them so much, I was afraid that they would ask for some money or something like that, but at last it turned out that this was all just my preconception: we even got a book from the guy that was about Nepalese culture – which he said, he also found on the street. 

To widen our experiences with Buddhist culture even more, today we also visited the amazing Swayambhunath temple. Actually there was a campaign as a civil initiative to clean Swayambunath that we also wanted to take part in, but having this Saturday as our first actual free day, we weren’t able to get up in time – this way we missed the cleaning part, instead got to know quite a few great people taking part in this initiative and got the chance to take a tea with them in a really nice cafe just top of Swayambunath. Anyway, the temple itself is even more amazing then the Buddhist temple we went to last weekend (Seto Gumba)! It’s really huge, with an amazing stupa in the middle and lots of houses for the offers around it, as well as lot’s of little statues – which as we got to know symbolize lots of different possible ways of enlightment, since all Buddhist people believe in different ways of reaching this state of mind... Well, it’s for sure that it is a place that is still worth visiting several times, but for now you can get a little insight about the place looking at the pictures below. :)