Tuesday, 23 September 2014

Exploring Kathmandu, 18 September 2014

P, D and I took a morning to walk to the nearby Monkey Temple: it was an easy 30 minute walk with a tough 10 minute stair climb at the end.  Given our recent lack of exercise that was no bad thing!

We started by walking out of the more touristy area and through some normal Kathmandu streets.







We passed what I'm guessing was a hospital for locals – it looked like it had taken over an old apartment block. 


On the way we stopped at a small temple.

Carving on the temple ceiling

Guard

Shrine in temple grounds

It was at this point that my camera staged a mini-revolt after all the cloud photos I’d taken (I culled extensively!) and unexpectedly lost all its charge.  I only have a photo of the monkey temple from a distance, and a photo I later took of my ticket, which shows the temple in what I suspect is its best light, at night.

Monkey Temple in background

The temple complex contains many small shops and stalls selling a wide variety of things to tourists: prayer wheels, prayer flags, necklaces, trinket boxes, ornamental padlocks (no, I don't get it), lots of brass objets d'art, meditation CDs, incense, etc.  There were surprisingly few monkeys actually at the temple - we saw a lot more on the walk down, in the cool of the hillside.  The view back towards Kathmandu was spectacular.



 We had lunch in the Garden of Dreams, a beautifully kept walled garden with a (small) entrance fee which is an oasis of calm in the middle of hectic Kathmandu.  After briefly exploring the gardens I vegged out in the grassed amphitheatre, people watching and resisting the urge to fall asleep as I enjoyed the contrast of the hooting, beeping traffic outside and the tranquillity within.

En route to the Monkey Temple





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