We went around Patan’s Durbar Square and I was delighted to find one of the few benefits of belonging to a SAARC country is that one gets discounts on tourist admittance. I have taken to carrying my Pakistani ID card around for this reason, though to be honest they just look at my appearance and pass me through.
I am quite big for a Nepali, an unusual experience for me as otherwise I am not tall not particularly large. This was particularly noticeable on the plane over, when most of the men were my height or less, but less so in the city. I suspect most of the men were labourers from the rural areas of Nepal, where nutrition is not as good as in the cities.
The museum is very good and highly informative; it has made it much easier to understand what we see. This city is full of colours and images, more than Pakistan and more than India, and to my monotheistic eyes it takes some times to interpret them. Another problem of interpretation is Devanagari – though I’ve learned the script, I still have to sound it out, which sometimes leads to amusing double takes such as when I sounded out सॉसेज so-say-je to realise, yes, there was a display of sausages next to it.
I had my first ever momos for lunch, a jhol momo, which is momos in soup. Very tasty, almost Malaysian except that there was certainly no fuss about vegetables and other bits and pieces. Momos and soup, that’s what you got. Plus a folpo pakora which I thought was perhaps a kind of mushroom but is instead lung.
We strolled through Jhamsikhel, one of the trendier parts of town, and popped into cafes and small shops where I was impressed by the quality of some of the local wares. Some very nice bags. I also went to Sabah Nepal, a SAARC women’s employment initiative which has its equivalent in Pakistan. I was hoping to find a handloom sari for a wedding but sadly nothing of suitable quality, as Nepal’s handlooms are not a patch on India’s. We did have some excellent tea (so nice to have good tea virtually everywhere; Nepal is yet to be overtaken by the filthy teabag tide) and a Yomari, which is a steamed rice dumpling filled with brown sugar and sesame, and which looks exactly like a flat white slug. Quite tasty, though definitely on the hearty side of things.