Duttatraya Square

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Tired and needing a good night’s sleep

Durbar Square was indeed lovely and quiet once the tourists had gone home. There was no traffic noise at all. Do you think we slept well? No, of course not!

 

The breeze dropped during the night so our open windows were no advantage at all. It was therefore a warm night. The quilt on the bed became a heat trap. Part way through the night I got up and turned on the pedestal fan. We still spent a lot of the night flapping the quilt around and poking various parts of our bodies out to catch the colder fan air. It would have been nice just to have had a sheet on us.

 

 

 

Someone was vomiting somewhere (three times). I instantly worried it was Jeremy in his adjoining room but Ian said it was someone out on the street. We heard a few bells ringing but that was a pleasant sound. The roosters we had seen near the hotel didn’t make any noise. I only heard one dog bark once. It really is a very quiet location. The only real downside to this bedroom is the lack of power points. We use power points a lot to recharge three cameras, a computer, shavers and a mobile phone. Just as well we brought some double adaptors with us.

 

Breakfast Up on the roof garden

We ate our breakfast upstairs on the roof garden. We asked for muesli and fruit curd (the Nepali version of fruit yoghurt). We ended up being served fruit salad and yoghurt. Who cares? It was divine! Bhaktapur is known for the quality of its yoghurt. That was followed by poached eggs on toast.

Even at breakfast time it was warm up there so we opened up one of the hotel’s big umbrellas and sat it over the table. It’s always so hazy and polluted wherever we have been. We expected to see mountain tops but all we see are hazy mountain “shapes”.

 

Haggling for necklaces in Duttatraya Square

Yesterday I mentioned a very helpful young fellow who works at the hotel. Well he felt we should walk to Duttatraya Square where we would find the oldest temple in Bhaktapur. So we set off in that direction. The Duttatraya Temple is the main attraction of the Square. Constructed by King Yaksha Malla, the giant three-storied temple is believed to have been built from the timber of a single tree. We had a great look around and got seriously way-laid by a lady selling bead necklaces. Her persistence paid off because I bought three chunky necklaces for myself and a delicate one for Hayley, our daughter. The seller said Hayley’s necklace had real stones in it but she struggled to remember exactly what the stones were. She could have told us anything. We know nothing about such things. The street vendors here expect you to haggle and you feel really awkward doing it but it can be a fun thing for both parties.

 

Walking to the River

According to our map there was a river close by somewhere so we thought we would check it out. We wandered down quite steep streets. Constantly on my mind was the fact that for every step down hill there would need to be one heading back up hill. Shudder, shudder! On our way downwards we spotted an animal in one of the garden lots. We weren’t sure but thought it might have been a ferret. I wonder if they have ferrets in Nepal?  Sadly we never reached the river. It was all simply getting too smelly and putrid for us. At one stage Jeremy was struggling not to vomit.

 

We turned around and took a slightly different route back up to the square and back to our hotel. We were certainly glad we had our hats and water bottles with us as we were sweltering when we got back. We collapsed into the settees in the foyer. It was lunch time but we were all still full from breakfast so we decided to skip lunch and have a lie down in our rooms for a while.

 

 

 

Next page - Siddha Pokhari and more sights

 

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