To Kirtipur and Back

This weekend, I met up with some friends and we headed out to a small hamlet to the southwest of the city. Well, small, hamlet, and southwest are not accurate.  It used to be a small hamlet to the southwest of KTM, but now it is a mid size town that is part of KTM. The uniqueness of Kitirpur is the old city feel, the fact that it is perch on a high hill, and has  historical significance .  When the first King come into valley most of the hamlets and villages were on the valley floor and quite easy to defeat. But Kirtipur's location up on a hill that rose up out of the valley floor, caused a bit of a problem for the soldiers to conquer. As the enemy forces were trying to climb up the steep sides, the people of Kirtipur mocked them and apparently blew raspberries at them.  When the place was finally defeated, the first thing theconquering king ordered was that all the men's noses and lips were cut off. There was only exception for not recieving this punishment - those who played wind instruments. I suddenly felt the need to learn the oboe!

So we headed

bowls and plates 

 off for an adventure.  We actually went to a small village south of Kirtipur,called Chobar, first just to say we had been there. The village has a temple next to the village square that has the distinction of have plates and other eating utensils nailed to  the walls of the temple. I approached a man to ask him about the reason for that, and he told us more about the practice - To make sure that their deceased relatives have eating utensils to eat on and with in heaven, the people nail plates and untensils to the temple walls.  This gentleman was dressed in white, so I asked him who in his family had died and he told us about his mother who had passed away two months before. He came to offer a  sacrifice each month and had brought his whole family with him. He said, "There are many interesting things about this temple, I wish my English was better so I could tell you about them."

Kirtipur

We walked around for about ten minutes and then decided to head over to Kirtipur.

Kirtipur, I think I mentioned was built on the top of a high hill. That was long ago and the city has slowly edged its way down the hillside on terraces. One of the two main universities in the country is at the base of the hill and so there are a lot of young folks milling around. Today most of them had cricket bats as there was a tournment at the school.
From the city gates, we decided to climb the stairs to the top of the town. We could have opted to walk around the base, but seeing that none of us had been to the top of the hill, we decided to hike up and see what we could see!
Not sure on the number of stairs, but we made it...

stairs

 It was nice to get up where the breeze was. It was starting to heat up and so the breeze was appreciated.
We wandered around the top part of the town and talked to some of the locals. We watched a woman weaving for a while and took some photos of kids.
The view from the top was not good. We really need some rain in the whole valley because the air quality is so poor right now. Could not even see the hills that surround the valley, it was so hazy!

After a bit of time up there, we headed down leisurely, snapping photos (i'll put some in another post) and got back to our hired taxi to head home. It was a very pleasant excursion.