One of the reasons I liked staying in the Kathmandu Valley was that it holds the greatest concentration of UNESCO world heritage sites on the planet. All within an hour of Kathmandu city. This morning we headed out for Bhaktapur, which was known not only for it's classic buildings, but also for being closed to traffic in the core of the old palace and temple complex. We arrived in early morning. The person walking beside Suzanne is asking us if we need a guide.
We saw these goats tied to a shrine. I wasn't sure if they were there to eat the food offerings made to the gods or if they were going to be sacrafices themselves later on.
The Hindu dieties just inside the Durbar (square) were really facinating. Apparently they have multiple arms to reflect all the traints of that particular incarnation of the god: Each hand is either posed to reflect a particular meaning (compassion, protection, etc) or to hold an object with a symbolic meaning.
The golden door is famous and I've put the photo in original sized so you can see the details. There's two deities that are particularly revered by the Nepali people and so have the red powder from the bindi.
The woman in the picture was nice enough to let me to take her picture. Sorry it's blurry:
With things starting to open, we finished our coffees and people watching and headed into the back streets.
Bhaktipur was exceptional for the stone temples. They are from a different period from the wooden temples and palaces and the designs and carvings on them look very different:
We arrived early enough that all the museums and stores were not yet open so we had a coffee where we could watch the square. In the background at the golden gate, a travel TV show is getting ready to film a local man place a Bindi on the deitis of the golden gate. The young men at the pillar and sitting by the temple will spend the day trying to get hired as guides by tourists.
The temple was later taken over by bored students waiting for their field trip to start
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