Heaven and earthenware ... intricate detail on the Golden Gate.Credit: Michael Gebicki
Michael Gebicki is fascinated by the splendour and startling detail of the mediaeval city of Bhaktapur.
'Want to see animal Kama Sutra?" I'm in Bhaktapur, 14 kilometres east of Kathmandu, climbing steps and heading towards Durbar Square, the city's historic centrepiece. This is the third would-be guide to offer his services in the space of 100 metres and this time I'm hooked.
The first two proposed architecture as their pitch but I already have a guidebook. This one, lounging against a platform beside a woman pouring milk over a Shiva Lingam, looks like Johnny Depp in Jack Sparrow mode. He's appealing in a dishevelled way and animals in flagrante - well, who wouldn't be curious?
Bhaktapur's Durbar Square is a miraculous survivor from Nepal's mediaeval period, with a place on UNESCO's World Heritage list. Between the 12th and the 16th centuries, this was the seat of power of the Malla dynasty, which once ruled an area well beyond the present-day borders of Nepal. This was a rich and powerful kingdom and the wealth of the Malla kings allowed them to build a city of sophistication and splendour.
Theirs was low-tech architecture using mud, brick and wood. Yet the arched, multi-roofed, pagoda-style temples are as graceful as egrets. It was under the Mallas that decorative woodwork, stone carving and metalwork reached its zenith. This was Nepal's golden age and in Bhaktapur's Durbar Square (not to be confused with the better-known square of the same name in Kathmandu), it has been largely restored to its former glory under a massive German-funded restoration project of the 1970s.
Best of all, traffic is prohibited in the square. While Kathmandu's illustrious Durbar Square is crammed with architectural wonders, when you stand back to admire the Temple of the Living Goddess you must also deal with the man wanting to take you on a trishaw tour of the city and the woman thrusting postcards at you.
We've gone just a few paces when my guide stops before the Shiva Parvati Temple and points up. Sure enough, carved into the roof struts is the carnal carnival that he promised: coupling elephants, monkeys and even sheep, tongues lolling, trunks twining and eyes bulging with cartoonish delight.
At the top of the staircase, we turn into the West Gate and pay an admission fee of $US10 ($9.40) to enter Durbar Square. It's a large, open courtyard with three-storey brick buildings on the outside and temples dotted around the interior.
Nowhere else has such a concentration of pagoda-style temples as the Kathmandu Valley and Bhaktapur's Durbar Square is the best preserved of the lot, a conglomeration of pagodas and shikhara-style temples, as the Indian-inspired shrines are known.
The four temples to our right represent the four highest Hindu pilgrimage sites, built by the Malla kings so pilgrims who could not make the long journey to the actual sites could at least get a taste. I'm reading this from my guidebook, because Jack Sparrow has abandoned me to chat with a friend in front of the Golden Gate.
Made from beaten brass, the Golden Gate is possibly the supreme decorative artwork of the Kathmandu Valley. On top of the gate is Garuda, the bird that is the vehicle for the god Vishnu, with writhing snakes at his feet. Garuda is usually depicted as an all-conquering, death-dealing man-bird but this one looks more like a pudgy cupid.
I'm standing back to admire the gate's handiwork when two men enter leading a goat. My guide pulls his hair back with one hand and, with the other, makes a cutting motion across his throat while uttering a terrible gargling sound.
The Nepalese version of Hinduism still includes animal sacrifices. In 2009, a quarter of a million goats, chickens and buffalo were sacrificed for the Gadhimai Festival, which takes place once every five years in southern Nepal. We follow the goat into a courtyard and to the door of the Taleju Temple but it's for Hindus only. I can peer in but that's as far as the soldiers at the gate will allow a non-believer to go.
There is much more to savour in Durbar Square - the splendid, 55-Window Palace, the Siddhi Lakshmi Temple, the Vatsala Temple - every window and doorway embellished with rich decorative detail, the temples dripping with ornament though details have been blurred by decades of exposure, like cakes left out in the sun. The style is Nepalese baroque - art animated by liturgy. A multi-limbed Durga skewering a demon here, the four-headed, 10-armed goddess Taleju Bhawani there and the nightmarish Bhairab with his garland of human heads.
My guide is now tugging me to the other side of the square, where a narrow lane dives down the hill. He wants to take me to a shop where Tibetans are bent over tables painting mandalas, the detailed, diagrammatic paintings sacred to Tibetan Buddhists. The merchant shows me how the fabric paintings can be rolled up for easy transport but they're shiny and immaculate and I prefer mandalas that are old and smudged with smoke-darkened fingers.
At this stage, my guide decides that I'm not a player. There is no commission coming his way and he's done enough to earn the 200 rupees ($2.60) that I'd agreed to pay him. I throw in another 100 rupees as a tip and he looks vaguely disappointed. Is that a friendly pat on the back or a shove he gives me as we part company?
I continue down the narrow laneway and into Potters Square, the photogenic epicentre of Bhaktapur. Around the perimeter of the square, potters are busy at their trade, wrestling bowls and torsos for miniature Shivas from clay. Their only tools are hands and a wheel that is whirled into motion by turning it with a stick, the most primitive device for making a thrown pot. Most of the square is covered with their output, arranged in neat rows as they dry in preparation for firing, against the statuesque backdrop of the Jeth Ganesh Temple.
Spread out on blue plastic tarpaulins across the rest of the square is a sea of yellowing rice drying in the sun. From time to time, a woman with gold jewellery dangling from her nose will wade through and redistribute the grains with a wooden rake.
So timeless are the activities and the costumes that it looks suspiciously like theme-park history - women in bonnets fussing over looms - but this is the real thing. And this is Bhaktapur's charm. It might feel like an open-air museum but this is a living, mediaeval city that still operates as if electricity, cars and mobile phones do not exist.
Back at Durbar Square, I'm lingering at Pashupatinath Temple, where a sleepy priest is slumbering in an oblong of sunlight behind the doorway, when my piratical pal comes around the corner. He's speaking German with a woman client and when he sees me, he winks lavishly and points upward, to the roof struts, where a carved man and woman are depicted doing - now, who would have thought that were possible?
Michael Gebicki travelled courtesy of Singapore Airlines and Abercrombie & Kent.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Singapore Airlines has a fare to Kathmandu for about $1438 low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne, including tax. You fly to Singapore (8hr), then to Kathmandu (5hr) on Silkair. It's a 30-minute taxi ride between Kathmandu and Bhaktapur; expect to pay about 2000 Nepalese rupees ($27) for a half-day hire.
Touring there
Abercrombie & Kent can arrange tours of Bhaktapur and other parts of the Kathmandu Valley in the company of expert guides. It also has a 10-night "Images of Nepal" trip, from $4625 a person. Phone 1300 851 800; see abercrombiekent.com.au.
Staying there
- Dwarika's is the prime choice for the visitor who wants to savour the atmosphere of old Kathmandu. Rooms are large and opulent, and cost from $273. See dwarikas.com.
- Another option is Hotel Tibet, with simple but clean and atmospheric rooms from $74. See www.hotel-tibet.com.
More information
See bhaktapur.com.
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