Visiting Kirtipur

Let’s look at another beautiful destination that I have visited a few weeks ago: Kirtipur. The village of Kirtipur is located just a few km from Kathmandu – around 7 km, but from Sanepa district, where we actually live, maybe it’s even closer. So one day, following travel book’s advises, we decided together with Stella, the Spanish volunteer to take a walking tour from Patan (remember, the district full of temples that I wrote about a long time ago) to Kirtipur and also Chobar – a small hill from where you are supposed to have really nice view on the valley. Well, probably the travel books didn’t take into consideration that we were living in Sanepa, since because our apartment is almost halfway between Patan and Kirtipur, it turned out to be a pretty big loop to start our trip in Patan. As a result of the long way there and back, after Patan I continued my way alone to Kirtipur which turned out to be around one hour of walking distance from Sanepa – where half of the road lead around Kathmandu, but the rest led by the feet of Chobar hill and through nice landscapes.

When I arrived to Kirtipur I immediately realized how different it was from Kathmandu: I just arrived to a real village, with no noise and peaceful atmosphere and with the villagers sitting on the street chatting or selling their products...Since my hand-drawn map of Kirtipur didn’t really reflect the reality, I decided to explore the village just by wandering around, with no exact destination at all. This is how I first found a pretty Thai Buddhist temple, where the monk invited me to go inside the temple and look at the huge golden Buddha statue there. It was also here that I met an interesting man and a young boy. To my surprise, the boy even knew where Hungary was, that it was neighbour to Austria – later I got to know that his parents were living in Vienna and he was kind of adopted by the man. They also suggested me to visit Bagh Bhairav temple and showed the direction in the way of uphill. While climbing up the stairs and asking for directions from the locals, this was when I met my companion for the rest of the day: a guy ran after me and offered to show me the way to the temple. Well, this finally resulted in showing me not only one temple, but whole Kirtipur: I felt like in a labyrinth going up and down and visiting all kinds of sights and temples – both Buddhist and Hindu. I have seen a tree with three different types of leaves – that if I remember well, represent Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva while the tree itself grew round a little statue inside. I have also seen a free village museum showing the villages occupations and traditions. While walking along the streets where the windows were decorated with thick wooden carving, according to Newari culture, my guide was explaining about many traditions of the Newari people from the funerals (like the cutting of the hair if someone close has died) to the ways of asking for a child from gods. I have seen the goddess for the women who they worship if they haven’t had a child, I got to know that college students visit Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge before exams and I have also seen the remaining of some animals sacrificed to the gods at different festivals – which as I got to know, are pretty frequent in Kirtipur based on Newari culture. Later – while my guide invited me to one of his friend’s house – I even tried a new kind of Nepalese drink, the rice beer, which have a white colour and a kind of sour taste. Well, I wouldn’t call it really beer, but finally it was still pretty nice.

Having spent all the afternoon in Kirtipur, I didn’t have enough time to still visit Chobar – so that trip still remains for another time. Since it was already getting dark, I had a fast walking trip back to Sanepa just to finish the long day with a nice Nepalese dinner.