I’ve seen the sunrise almost every day. The sky lightens just before five, the haze lifts, and the car horns begin. This morning, the hotel owners next door began their day with a dose of Nepali pop music that drifts from their open windows. Street dogs bark back and forth, call and response. Believe it or not, this---the courtyard of the guest house, tucked far behind the main roads---is one of the quietest spots I’ve found in the city.
The climb to Swayambudanth temple was embarrassingly difficult. After climbing the city’s hills, its 263 steps from the base to the top where the stupa sits is a hearty challenge. Near the top of the stairs, just below the stupa, a man blocks the path almost entirely with baskets of seeds and spices, colored power and necklaces. He is performing a puja, a worship to Shiva, whose statue sits across from him. I walked past him, clockwise following the other worshippers spinning prayer flags that line the circular base of the stupa. It is covered in the multicolored prayer flags of Tibetan Buddhism that spread good fortune through the air that passes through them.
While shooting a video of swaying prayer flags above, a monkey steals my water bottle. I go after him. He’s a baby, and futilely tries to attack the screw-off lid with his teeth while I growl and lunge in hopes he will leave it. Instead his mother, watching close by, growls back with barred teeth. I retreat; the baby has won. Soon she gives up on the bottle and it rolls down the hill into a pile of trash that I assume was also stolen from other unsuspecting humans.
I spend another day at the Bouddanth stupa, alternating between walking around it in the traditional clockwise fashion and hiding in cafes when the rain hits. With feet full of new-shoes blisters, I hesitate to risk much extra walking. Earthquake reconstruction has finally finished, and the stupa is once again adorned with its golden spire whose buddha eyes stare across at worshippers. At a rooftop café, I watch a number of men climb a ladder up the dome to the base of the spire to hang prayer flags. Even as the rain and thunder hits, one man continues with his armful of prayer flags. He dutifully hoists them in the air while I hide under the café roof, taking his photograph from afar.
The city feels familiar. Fighting street dogs, goat head vendors, lounging cows, ruthless taxis, deformed beggars---it doesn’t feel as rough as before. I walk without the anxieties of a newcomer.
