Lalitpur

Above: Housing in the Kathmandu Valley

Friday 11th November 1983

After breakfast in the Ashok Pie Restaurant we trudged south to another YHA Youth Hostel at Patan. Patan’s official name is ‘Lalitpur’, which translates as the City of Beauty. It is one of the Kathmandu Valley’s three Royal cities, from the days when the Malla Kings ruled the lands in the medieval period. A city of artisans, Patan is home to some of the country’s most intricate and opulent temples.

I bought another 36-exposure slide film for 110 Nepalese Rupees as this country is too picturesque to warrant photographic economy. At the Youth Hostel we paid 6 Nepalese Rupees for a dormitory bed and were shown to a pleasant double room with mosquito nets!

Our tour of Patan’s Durbar Square was short and sweet, just another jumble of temples and statues with a few bells and washing places thrown in. A couple of little kids latched on to us when we got up from a peanut (monkey nuts in shells) eating session, and they made a good photograph.

Officially the Durbar Square is a marvel of Newar architecture. The square floor is tiled with red bricks. There are many temples and idols in the area. The main temples are aligned opposite of the western face of the palace. The entrance of the temples faces east, towards the palace. There is also a bell situated in the alignment beside the main temples. The Square also holds old Newari residential houses. There are other temples and structures in and around Patan Durbar Square built by the Newa People. A centre of both Hinduism and Buddhism, Patan Durbar Square has 136 "bahals" (courtyards) and 55 major temples.

We walked up to the zoo, which cost a pitiful 50 Nepalese Paise entrance fee and sported a meagre collection of local animals. Worthy of note were the elephants, the lions and the tigers. A few Nepalese chumps thought that they were brave by trying to goad them into action by poking them with sticks. Neither us or the animals were impressed.

We returned to our “Indian Diet” of egg curry in the Blue Fox, as the sun cast a pinkish hue on the Himalayan mountains to the north. After supper we returned to Patan Durbar Square and confirmed that Lalitpur, “the City of Beauty”, was indeed misnamed. We wandered about amongst the jumble of tatty religious buildings and returned to the hostel via a coffee shop opposite the Blue Fox.

Here local boys crawled about on the floor in some sort of match-striking competition while the barman picked at a guitar and occasionally crooned some lyrics. We read our books and sipped coffee before retiring for a cold night in bed.