TIME OUT
Himalayan grandeur
PADMA RAMACHANDRAN
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Fantastic landscapes and friendly, cheerful people — Nepal is an ideal tourist destination.
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Photo: Padma Ramachandran
Scenic: A Buddhist temple.
NEPAL can, like Kerala, be called "God's Own Country". Well-endowed with a salubrious climate and the scenic beauty of an Indian hill station in many places, its people are friendly and cheerful. Chubby-cheeked, healthy children and fair, delicate-complexioned women are all smiles for the tourist. Many Nepalese move to India and elsewhere in search of work. As poverty is acute, it needs heavy investment in infrastructure and industries. However, Nature has compensated this lone "Hindu" kingdom of the world with snow-covered mountains, ravines and rivers, lush greenery and gorgeous waterfalls.
Outside our hotel in Kathmandu, we saw vegetable sellers with cauliflower, knolkhol and peas and not less than eight different varieties of leafy vegetables such as paalak and methi. Dusheri mangoes were abundantly available in June. And we were served delicious Nepalese Basmati rice throughout our trip. From a man selling curds neatly packed in flat mud pots and arranged on scales over his shoulders, I had delicious sweet curds (in a small mud vessel, a matka of sorts, costing five Nepali rupees).
Heady heights
More than 80 per cent of the people in the landlocked Himalayan country practise Hinduism. Ne is supposed to mean holy and pal is cave. Its landscape is diverse, ranging from the hot and humid Terai in the south to the lofty Himalayas in the north. Within a very small space, the elevation of Nepal increases from plain terrain to the tallest Himalayan peaks. Nepal has eight of the world's ten highest mountains, including Mount Everest on the border with China. It has many rivers including the famous Narayani. Kathmandu is the capital and largest city. Many of the interior villages are reachable only by foot or by pony/mule and it is very cold in winter.
A trip by helicopter from Kathmandu airport to see Mount Everest costs around Rs. 3,000. One cannot get too close to it, still you can have a glimpse of the highest mountain in the world.
Picturesque shrine
Similarly, one can go by helicopter to picturesque Muktinath — a Vishnu shrine — many hills away. Climbing up from the helipad, we found that the temple looked more Buddhist than Hindu and had a benign female priest who radiated peace. Outside the temple, further down, there is a cave with an eternal light considered as Durga. In one place, near the temple, there were many bells of different sizes tied in a row to some rods.
Kathmandu, the capital, has many temples of which Pasupathinath is the most famous. Here the linga is four-headed with srichakram, at its top. The temple's foyer is home to many a cow. Also, lots of monkeys love to jump across the 108 stone lingas of Shiva that are in a labyrinthine open enclosure in the courtyard of the temple. Usually there are many priests in the precincts of the temple who offer to do a puja. They spread a cloth and start their prayers for the family's welfare. To entice you, they promise a Rudraksh Mala as part of the prasad. Many NRIs and even some foreigners go through these rituals. On Mondays — which is said to be Shiva's day — the temple is so noisy and crowded that there is no place to drop a pin.
Guhyeswari, a beautifully structured temple, was built in celebration of Dakshayini's knee, which fell at the place (when her body was cut into pieces in rage by Shiva and scattered over different places in India, including in Kamakhya in Guwahati). Here you walk down some steps and see Ganesh represented by a flat lotus with a brass pot and serpent on its top — to its north is Dakshayani's "knee".
There is also a Neelkaant-Vishnu (a rare combination of Shiva-Vishnu, but in name only) embroiled in snakes — in horizontal posture in a pond of water — very colourful and worth seeing for the sheer beauty of the work.
Buddhist influence
Nepal has many Buddhist temples also — the one we saw was the biggest there, circular in shape. Around it is a mall with plenty of shops with Tibetan and Buddhist trinkets and clothes.
Combining scenic grandeur and spiritualism is the Manokamna Temple, which is a three-hour drive away from Kathmandu in a bus (the roadsides are lined with litchi, mango and other fruit trees) and by cable car. That half-hour gives you a grand scenic trip across many hills and a river. Here again the façade of the temple is distinctly Buddhist. People from many religions worship here and ask the goddess (on the floor covered with heaps of flowers) for favours — the priest assures you that prayers will be answered, the reason why it is called "Manokamna". Outside the temple it is shady, with eating-places and a huge sampangi (champa) tree shedding petals and spreading its fragrance.
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