Katmandu, Nepal – The all-seeing eyes of Buddha stare blankly over Katmandu’s Palace Square from a massive, wooden portal. The door is shut tight. But standing here on the very day in November when Maoist rebels signed a peace accord ending 10 years of turmoil in Nepal, I could almost hear the giant door open, bidding visitors back.
Travelers largely have stayed away from Nepal since 1996 when Maoist insurgents began a terror campaign. Rebels blockaded roads, bombed tourist areas and demanded money from trekkers in the mountains. The U.S. embassy in Katmandu advised citizens to avoid Nepal, and the Peace Corps suspended operations.
Then, in 2001, the king and nine members of his family were massacred in the palace by the crown prince.
I booked a trip to Nepal – my first – last summer, about the time insurgents agreed to lay down their arms. Since, negotiations between the government and the Maoists have remained on track. A peace accord was signed Nov. 21, and visitors are returning.
With 75 percent of the country covered by mountains, including many of the world’s tallest peaks – among them 29,035-foot Mount Everest – Nepal is a dream destination. Its closure to outsiders during the Rana clan’s regime from 1846 to 1951 only piqued interest.
Undeveloped feudal kingdom
The first visitors who trickled in after that found marvels quite apart from the Himalayas, including the soulful, straightforward Nepalese people.
The still largely feudal mountain kingdom was undeveloped but breathtakingly colorful. Its ethnically diverse population of about 27 million were ruled by a monarchy and organized in castes, but they co-existed.
The myriad faces of Nepal today are nowhere more apparent than in the fertile Katmandu Valley, which is ringed by terraced rice paddies. The Himalayas are about 50 miles north but seldom visible from the city because of clouds and pollution.
I spent a week walking through this vibrant, noisy, nerve-rattling capital and touring nearby Bhaktapur and Patan. Since the late 13th century this triad of cities – now melded in urban sprawl – has been the home of Nepal’s kings, who filled it with palaces and temples. With seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Katmandu Valley would richly reward visitors even if it weren’t in the shadow of the Himalayas.
Soon after I arrived, I booked a mountain flight in a small Buddha Air plane from the Katmandu airport to see Everest. The aircraft are specially designed to give every passenger a window seat.
It’s best to leave early because clouds roll in by midmorning, obscuring the mountains. Minutes after takeoff, I saw 23,771-foot Langtang north of Katmandu, followed by the eastern part of the Himalayan chain, including flat-topped Menlungtse (23,560 feet), Cho Oyo (26,906 feet) near Nangpa La pass to Tibet,
Nuptse (25,790 feet) on Everest’s shoulder, and then Everest itself.
I was back at my hotel by 9 a.m., eating muesli and wondering whether it had all been a dream.
Keen business people
I stayed at Hotel Tibet near the foreign embassies and new royal palace. It is owned by a family that immigrated to Nepal after the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1951, when refugees flooded in. The newcomers were known as keen business people, and they prospered in Tibetan Buddhist communities.
It was a 10-minute walk from the hotel to the tourist hub of Thamel in central Katmandu. I took a variety of routes, passing vegetable stands, bicycle taxi ranks, boys playing cricket and intersections clogged with cars that abide by no traffic rules except survival of the fittest.
My path passed the eerily quiet, heavily guarded new royal palace, which occupies a huge walled compound in central Katmandu. Once open to tourists, it has been closed since that night in 2001 when, high on drugs and alcohol and distraught after an argument with his parents, Prince Dipendra opened fire on his family then turned the weapon on himself. He was rushed to the hospital in a coma and proclaimed king, but he died without regaining consciousness. The prince’s uncle, Gyanendra, took the throne.
Life goes on, especially in crazy Thamel, which grew up when hippies discovered Nepal’s cheap hospitality and hashish in the 1960s. The country outlawed marijuana in 1973, and only a few graying flower children hang on. But the Thamel street scene remains overpowering, a slam against the wall for trekkers just emerged from the silent, white temple of the Himalayas.
Thamel’s unofficial nerve center is Pilgrims Book House, which has a large collection of titles on the Himalayas, handicrafts and a congenial restaurant. I sat there drinking milky Nepalese tea with owner Rama Nand Tiwari. He started selling used books on the street in Varanasi, India, then moved to Katmandu about 25 years ago.
The only other quiet corner in Thamel is the newly opened Garden of Dreams on the grounds of an old European-style, Rana-era palace occupied by the Ministry of Sports and Education.
I kept going back to Thamel because of the restaurants. They serve every variety of Asian cuisine, refreshingly unfused. I had perfect pad Thai in the courtyard at Yin and Yang, and sat on the floor at Thamel House, tasting traditional dishes of the Newari people (half the population in Katmandu Valley) such as roasted soybeans and potatoes fried with turmeric, chili and cumin.
Thamel is also an irresistible place to shop, with merchandise from all over Asia, testifying to Katmandu’s favored location on ages-old trading routes between India and China.
Prices for fabrics and clothes, carpets, wood carvings, Newari metalwork, handmade mulberry paper and an astonishing array of knickknacks are low even before negotiation.
Upscale shoppers favor Durbar Marg, two long blocks east of Thamel. It is Katmandu’s Fifth Avenue.
Katmandu’s historic center, Palace Square or Durbar Square, is crowded with statues, pavilions, the old royal palace and marigold-decorated temples in a range of architectural styles. Pilgrims who come for blessings from the Shivas and Vishnus inside, souvenir hawkers, rickshaw drivers and restoration teams working atop rickety scaffolds make the area vibrantly alive.
Tourists must buy tickets to wander through the precincts, and many monuments, such as Taleju Temple, a three-tiered pagoda built in 1564, can be inspected only from the outside.
The old palace stands at the east side of the square. It is beautiful but dilapidated, haunted by conspiracy, like the mass killing of 30 officials in 1846 engineered by the first Rana prime minister. Among its musty treasures are touching baby pictures of King Tribhuvan, who was a virtual prisoner in the palace but escaped to India in 1950, where he helped unseat the Ranas and give Nepal its first democratic government.
