Lorre Weidlich -- Hyde Park Foreign Affairs Desk

This is the latest in an on-going series of reports by Hyde Park's well traveled friend and neighbor, Lorre Weidlich.

O n the plane to Kathmandu I had my first food since lunch in the hotel in Varanasi the previous afternoon. I was so exhausted I almost fell asleep before the food arrived. Going through immigration in Kathmandu turned out to be a time-consuming process because the photos I needed were in my luggage; I had to recover that before completing the visa process. Fortunately, my hotel transfer was pre-arranged and I was relieved to find myself in the care of a kind young Nepali named Shambhu. At the hotel I lay down briefly to rest and awoke three hours later. I had fallen asleep so quickly I hadn't even had time to feel drowsy. So my first day in Kathmandu was uneventful. I needed the rest and I was glad to be out of India.

The next morning I rose early and walked around. The streets were clean, the temperature was comfortable, and the view from my hotel window was encouraging. I arranged a tour with Shambhu that included several sights around Kathmandu, a trip to Nagarkot, where I could see the Himalayas if the air was clear, and an exploration of one of the other cities in the Kathmandu valley. That would happen the following day; this day I was on my own. I headed for Patan.

The Kathmandu valley lies roughly in the center of Nepal, between the plain, or Terai, in the south of Nepal, and the Himalayas in the north. The people that inhabit the valley are known as Newars. The three cities in the valley, Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur, each have at their centers a Durbar Palace Square, filled with remarkable temples and other structures. Each of these cities was a separate kingdom until they united.

Home of Kathmandu's living goddess.

Each also has a kumari, a living goddess. These girls are chosen based on astrological considerations at about 5 years of age; they remain the living goddess until they reach puberty. After that, they reassimilate with the rest of society, although one person told me a former kumari could not marry because her husband would die. While a girl is the kumari, she lives in a special house, only showing herself in the window occasionally and being taken out on appropriate occasions.

Around the Durbar Square Patan

A third view of the Durbar Square Patan

Perhaps because Patan was the first city I explored, I later decided it was my favorite. My first look at Patan's Durbar Square left me delighted and amazed; this must be the mythical Shangri-La. There was wonderful architecture, statuary, and carving everywhere. Every way I turned, there was a temple. Interestingly, there were also two wheelers driving through the square. Some of the religious iconography was Hindu and some was Buddhist, but it was mixed together freely. This prompted conversations with several people during my stay. Religion in Nepal is fluid, a loose mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism; regardless of how a person identifies himself, he can go to either kind of temple. After all, one person told me, Buddha was a Hindu. Another said, We're tolerant. However, some religious establishments cannot be entered by someone who was not born Hindu.

I shared that distinction with, among others, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian widow of Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's son. When they came to Nepal some years ago, he could enter places that she could not, even though she had converted to Hinduism.

I wandered around the city taking pictures. From Durbar Square I headed for the Mahabouddha temple, then the Rudravarna Mahavihar temple, then the Kumbheshwor temple, stopping at other temples and sights along the way. And during the day I made a point of locating one of the four stupas built at the cardinal points of the city by Ashoka--the link between the different parts of my trip.