We’re Off to See the Stupa!

So, have you had enough of the stupa south of Thamel?  Good.  Time to feature our next stupa.

This one ties for “breath-taking” with stupa #3, which should also appear later this month.  In fact, this pair are two of the top tourism destinations in all of Nepal; many of the guidebooks feature one or the other of them on the cover.  We visited Swayambhunath first, and it has a solid claim for notoriety.

Do you remember the story from Nepali Politics 101, about the legend of the boddhisatva that meditated atop a hill and then cleaved a gap in the surrounding hills to drain the primordial lake that once filled the Kathmandu Valley?  Swayambhunath marks the spot where the boddhisatva is said to have meditated.

Honestly, the stupa is so old that no one seems to be quite able to tell exactly when it was built, or by who, or why.  Guidebooks and tourist sites like to throw around words like “ancient” and “mysterious.”  But an old chronicle, and a damaged stone inscription, and archaelogists’ best guess, all agree that the stupa is approximately 1500 years old.  No, not built in 1500–I mean, it is likely at least one thousand, five hundred years old.  Tradition says that there was a previous structure in the same place even earlier than that, and I don’t disregard the tradition.  People do like to rebuild things.  And if I were a prehistoric person wandering around the Kathmandu Valley, I think I would have naturally been drawn to the hill.  Anyone would.

Can you find the stupa? Review what you've learned about stupas, and look carefully... Oh, all right, it's hard to miss.

The entire area is important to the history and culture of the Kathmandu Valley.  The base of the hill itself is chockful of smaller monuments–and stretching from the base to the top, simply endless streams of prayer flags.

Even as you drive around the small ring road at the base of the hill, prayer flags wave over your head.

Really, the entire hill is a shrine. And the prayer flags continue, and the waves of monuments grow more complex, as you ascend.

Nepali of the Day:

pahaD:  hill

upateka:  valley

paani:  water

tol:  lake

chaDnu:  to climb

ko: of (possessive)

Haami Swayambhunathko pahaD chaDyau.  –  We climbed Swayambhunath hill.

Dherai bharsha aghi — Many years ago