crapmandu – a denial

I hate Kathmandu. Sometimes. It’s hard not to. Most tourists tailor their itineraries so as to spend a minimum of time in the capital. Why should they waste their precious holidays weaving their way through interminable traffic jams between tourist attractions swamped by a brave new world of lurid malls and office buildings while tuhe pristine beauty of the Himalayas beckon?

But I love Kathmandu just as well. It’s not only a nostalgia for the BMX-biking days of my teenage years, one that reaches back into the impossibly exotic takes of valley settlements foregrounding the snow giants in the photos of Toni Hagen, and even further to Colonel Kirkpatrick’s 1793 rendering:

From the summit of Chandraghiri there is a most commanding prospect, the eye, from hence, not only expatiating on the waving valley of Nepaul, beautifully and thickly dotted with villages, and abundantly chequered with rich fields fertilized by numerous meandering streams; but also embracing on every side a wide expanse of charmingly diversified country(…)the scenery gradually rising to an amphitheatre, and successively exhibiting to the delighted view the cities and numberless temples of the valley below.

Kathmandu’s still around. For every monstrosity that sears my retinae, there’s a balm in the beauty spots I am still (re)discovering today, be it in the tongba joints of Thaiti, the rural spread of Taudaha or the tranquil town temples left behind in the rush.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of crap man do here. But I refuse to let our memories of what the Kathmandu Valley once was and what it could still become be crushed by the overwhelming reality of the present. Bringing to light what remains and rewarding creative efforts to help this city live may yet turn the tables on the philistines intent on destroying our cultural legacy…and allow us to live if not quite a second golden age, at least an alternative to the beast that squats in place of Machhendranath, protector of this blessed valley.