Kathmandu 1 (2 to come!) November 20-21, 2017

We stepped off the plane and into the dust of Kathmandu and were immediately overwhelmed.

Living in the New York metropolitan area you develop a certain idea of “cityness.” Cities are tall, they have defined transport routes, grids, easily navigable streets. Districts are easily identifiable by form, architecture, class. The roads are properly paved, the traffic system regular, if infuriating.

Kathmandu does not meet this definition of city.

If NYC is a solid, Kathmandu is a liquid, it spreads to fill the valley that contains it. Three million people now live in an urban sprawl that was once a hundred separate smaller cities, towns, villages, and farming communities. What was once ubiquitous has been pushed to the edge, farms and brick factories scattered at the foot of the mountains that ring the city, pressed out further and further each year by development.

Stand on a tall hill and you can see the whole city, a vast landscape of concrete brick and wood, no building taller then 10 or 15 stories, everything under construction. In both of my excursions to Kathmandu, I never saw a single working traffic light. I can count the number of street signs I encountered on one hand.

In the first 30 minutes in Kathmandu I got an exaggerated sense of the rhythm of the city. It is this way with all cities, at first: the place presents itself as a caricature, manifesting its urban character all at once. It had not rained in a week and the air was extra thick with dust, which shone off the headlights of a thousand motorcycles and cars, gliding through Kathmandu in the dark. Honking was constant: one honk for “watch out” two for “passing right” three for passing left.”

Jetlagged and ready for bed, it seemed as if all the world dissolved, only Kathmandu remained, sprawling out to the edges of the valley, to the edges of the world.

We stayed in a hotel near Boudha, a charming Buddhist neighborhood centered around a massive stupa. It had fallen down in the 2015 earthquake, but the people of Boudha had pooled together the money and effort to restore it long before the government was able too. Throughout the city, the earthquake’s wake was still visible, temples and old buildings were being repaired, or new ones erected in their place, a melancholy sight, new structures imitating the old, mementos of themselves. Still, there is a sense that people lived in history far more than we do in the States. These ancient temples are alive as places of worship and grounds for festivals, people in the neighborhood walked around the Stupas, spinning prayer wheels. It is a different way of inhabiting a city.

The first full day I spent in Kathmandu brought my perceptions out of caricature and into reality. One day is not enough to know a city, but I developed inklings, I began to understand the places I had been. Certainly, a view of the city from a hilltop restaurant by the monkey temple helped. From that height all of Kathmandu spread out, almost up to the mountains. It gave a sense of scale, a sense of amazement at how this place held together. At the Durbar Square of Patan, one of the smaller cities absorbed into Kathmandu, we had a chance to eat in a courtyard of antique buildings, to walk the ramparts of a palace. Across the street were low concrete shopping centers, tea shops, restaurants. The tourist face of Kathmandu began to become clear, the juxtaposition of old and new, 500-year-old palaces, day-old restaurants, local sweets, ancient-looking tchotchkes, buffalo burgers.

We rested in the courtyard of Patan’s old palace before heading back to Boudha and preparing for the next day’s journey to Lumbini – our new home. I found a wonderful banyan tree and sat beneath it, journaling until Dr. Santschi came to call me away. I imagined myself, back when the building was new, a Yiddish merchant or scholar, bound east. It was a fun daydream, sitting beneath that tree, imagining strolling that courtyard long before its birth. As we left, Dr. Santschi mentioned that this was once the woman’s courtyard. Men were not allowed inside. It was jarring, to have a daydream snapped like that, to prove the impossibility of the already implausible. We left the next day, embarking on a long trip over the mountains. Kathmandu was still mysterious. I wanted to go back.

Up Next, the Kapilvastu Free Health Clinic.