Bhaktapur: Postcard City

I dare anyone to try going to Bhaktapur and getting bad pictures.  Honestly, I think you’d have to work at it.  Here’s 3 I got in a row yesterday, without even trying hard:

One of the many temples in Bhaktapur

...and another temple in Bhaktapur...

...and yet another one...or possibly part of the old palace...same thing

(And it’s good to have easy stuff–yes, obviously, I’ve been too busy lately.  And occasionally sick.  You know the drill.)

Nepali of the Day:

sajilo:  easy

mandir: temple

sundar:  beatiful

A Bhaktapuri Wood Carver Would Carve…

[As Sean dwells on in his blog, our Internet connection here isn't the best. I actually wrote and saved the start of this post yesterday, but when the Internet stopped cooperating, I couldn't post it. So it's going up today -- hopefully with today's intended post, too.]

I mentioned yesterday that the citizens of Bhaktapur are largely preserving their culture, and their arts. For a very long time, they have earned fame for the beauty and detail of their carvings. I’m here to post some of that ancient heritage on the very non-ancient web. Enjoy!

First, an example from a typical private house:

How would you like to look out this window every morning?

And here’s several photos of a centuries-old Brahmin house:

A view of most of a house, with its extensive wood carvings

Intricate carving of Hindu deities over a door... note the paint still visible on some figures

Over time, this carving over the window has clearly suffered some damage

Next post, a view inside a woodcarving shop.

Nepali of the Day:

Bhaktapur ekdam purano shahar ho. — Bhaktapur is a very old city.

(ekdam=very, purano=old, shahar=city, ho=is)

Bhaktapur

I know, I know, two whole days without a post. But my excuses are good.

Since my last post, we have:

• test driven and bought a car
• designed and searched for and edited a lot of ESL lessons (okay, I did that, not we)
• visited Bhaktapur (and took plenty of pictures for all week)
• visited other people’s houses
• been visited at our house by other people
• gone out to eat twice
• driven around the city in our new car (okay, Sean did that — I helped navigate)
• found both English language movie theaters
• watched The Dark Knight
• gone shopping twice, with room for groceries & household goods in our new car

See? Aren’t they good excuses?

Did I mention we now have a car? No pictures, though, yet. Later.

Right now I’ll focus on Bhaktapur, because I’m sure its pictures will be more fun anyway.

First, you need to know that the area of Nepal we live in is known as “the Kathmandu valley,” because it’s exactly that, a low area surrounded on all sides by “hills.”  The valley’s ground is low and fairly flat because it was once the bottom of an ancient lake. But Kathmandu isn’t the only city here. In fact, the valley holds three separate cities, and several smaller towns and villages.

Granted, with a growing influx of modernity, the urban areas are starting to merge into one large metropolitan area. I do notice when the buildings thin out for a while, and we pass more fields and patches of wild areas, but otherwise the only way I was certain we’d left Kathmandu the first time was when the business signs started listing their address as “Lalitpur” instead of Kathmandu. So you have the names of the three cities: Kathmandu, Lalitpur (AKA Patan), and Bhaktapur.

I’m sure I’ll write more about their histories in a later Nepali Politics lesson. Right now, all you need to know is that a few centuries ago each of the cities was the capital of its own kingdom. And Bhaktapur was probably the most impressive of the bunch. It lost prestige to Kathmandu a couple hundred years ago, and a 1934 earthquake damaged many of its buildings. Still, all this has meant that the city has kept more of its native feel than the more cosmopolitan Kathmandu, and the impression has been helped by a project dating from the 1970s, spearheaded by Germany, to help Bhaktapur to reconstruct and preserve its monuments and display its vital culture.

I have enough to display and talk about with Bhaktapur for several days. To begin, here’s a few pictures to give you a sense of its medieval feel:

The first street we entered in Bhaktapur

Buildings fronting an open area in Bhaktapur

A road leading off a main square in Bhaktapur