Bhaktapur

Most people see Bhaktapur between eleven and four, in a coach party, and leave saying it was beautiful and crowded. Both are true, and both are avoidable. The city empties completely in the evening when the buses go, and the ticket you already bought is valid the next morning, when the squares belong to people sweeping their steps and children going to school.

Staying the night is the single decision that changes this place from a sight into a city.

What Bhaktapur is

An independent kingdom until 1769, and the richest of the three that shared this valley. Everything you look at was built in competition with Kathmandu and Patan, which is why three towns fifteen kilometres apart each have a durbar square of that quality.

The 1934 earthquake destroyed much of it and the 2015 one took more. The reconstruction has been slow, careful and largely done with traditional brick and timber rather than concrete, and it is still going on. Scaffolding here is not neglect.

Bhaktapur sits at 1,400 metres, slightly higher and noticeably cleaner-aired than Kathmandu.

The four squares

Durbar Square holds the 55-Window Palace and the Golden Gate, the gilded doorway into the Taleju courtyard. Non-Hindus cannot enter the temple itself. The square is more open than Kathmandu’s, partly because several temples that stood here were lost in 1934 and never rebuilt.

Taumadhi Square has the Nyatapola, five roofs, thirty metres, the tallest temple in Nepal. It was finished in 1702 and it has come through every earthquake since without serious damage, which local guides will tell you is the foundation and everyone else attributes to the goddess inside. Nobody knows who she is: the shrine has never been opened to the public.

Dattatreya Square is quieter and older, and the Peacock Window is in a lane just off it. A fifteenth-century wooden lattice with a peacock’s tail fanned across it, generally regarded as the finest carving in the country. It is a window on a private building. You look at it from the street.

Pottery Square is a working yard, not a display. Clay drying in rows, wheels turning, kilns of straw and ash. Someone will offer to let you throw a pot and it is worth doing badly.

What to eat

Juju dhau, “king curd”, is the reason food writers come to Bhaktapur. Buffalo-milk yoghurt set in unglazed clay pots, which absorb water and thicken it until it is closer to custard. It is sold everywhere in the old town and it is not the same thing as the yoghurt sold in Thamel.

Otherwise this is Newar food: bara, chatamari, aloo dum eaten cold with beaten rice, and in winter yomari.

Buy the curd from a shop where the pots are stacked and turning over, not from a fridge. It is unpasteurised and it is meant to be eaten the day it is made.

Walking out

The road from Bhaktapur up to Changunarayan takes about an hour and a half on foot through fields and brick kilns. Changunarayan is the oldest temple in the valley, there is a stone inscription there dated to the fifth century, and it gets a fraction of the visitors the squares do. From there it is another two or three hours up the ridge to Nagarkot, which is how to arrive at the viewpoint without a car.

Practical things

• The ticket is checked at every entrance to the old town and there are several. Carry it.
• Extend it on arrival. It costs nothing, takes ten minutes and a passport, and it means you can walk back in the next morning. Almost nobody does this and it is the best-kept small tip in the valley.
• Cash. There are ATMs on the ring road but very little card acceptance inside the old town.
• It is cold at night from November to February and many of the guesthouses are old brick buildings with no heating.

The honest caveat

Part of the entry fee funds the restoration, and part of what you are looking at has been rebuilt within living memory. Some visitors find that dilutes it. The counter-argument is that the buildings have been rebuilt after earthquakes for six hundred years by the same families using the same joinery, and that continuing is more authentic than leaving a ruin standing.