Wednesday, November 12
A moment in Bhakitpur

A surprising amount of daily life happens on the streets, in public, we found as we wandered.

There are public water faucets periodically, and you would see women there washing their clothes or dishes. Women gathered on street corners, crouching or sitting together, talking and making handcrafts. One man sat on a stool on the sidewalk, and his wife hovered over him, shaving him. There was a row of houses in the sun with some women in front winnowing grain, maybe rice or millet.

Everywhere you could hear people inside, tapping on bracelets they were making or doing other work. And some of the women carried loads of rocks or gravel to a construction site in conical baskets on their backs held with a tump line around their foreheads. Industrious people, seemingly comfortable with their lives, but not wealthy by our standards.

We had lunch by a school, and the sounds of the kids playing exuded irrepressible enthusiasm. And I was impressed there, as I had been in the Khathmandu Durbar Square, as how much the temples were visited by the local people. Not necessarily for worship, either. The school children climbed on the temples when they were released from the school yard, and people of all ages gathered there to talk and sit.

The temples were part of their daily lives; they grew up on them.

More of this day
The next day

this travelogue is part of the subside travelzine
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