The most dramatic building in the square is the five-storeyed pagoda of the Taleju Mandir, with a bronze stupa at its apex. The pagoda, a tapering succession of roofs symbolizing the various stages of enlightenment, was perfected here in Nepal, and it was Arniko who took the design to the Ming court at Peking.
One of the pleasures of meandering round Durbar Square is the immense amount of carved and sculpted detail. In the Royal Palace there are stone slabs called shildayras that carry historical records from the Lichavi period, 1800 years ago. On the beams in the chowks are intricately worked and painted lotus flowers, dragons and swastikas, and the stone walls of Krishna’s temple are adorned with athletic, erotic couplings.
‘Krishna is the god of love,’ explains Kunda. ‘He’s a young guy with a flute and girlfriends all over the world.’
I’m rather envious.
‘Our gods don’t tend to have girlfriends. It’s something we’ve rather missed out on.’
The smallest of the old kingdoms was centred on Bhaktapur, seven miles east of Kathmandu. On our way out there we’re waved past a police checkpoint set up since the Maoists recently brought their attacks to Kathmandu itself. They’re searching all the buses that run out to the country areas in the east. According to Kunda, journeys that took 12 hours can now take 48.
Kunda’s view is that the Maoists’ recent change of tactics, targeting civilians in the capital, has lost them support.
‘It’s not that the Maoists are terribly brilliant or strong, just that successive governments have been weak and fractious and corrupt, and they (the Maoists) have tapped into that bedrock of neglect and apathy and frustration in the people. They’ve grown so fast precisely because everything else has been in such disarray.’
With an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 rebels, with looted arms from the police and the army, how does he see the future?
There can, he is sure, be no military solution. There has to be compromise. The institution of monarchy is quite strong and Nepalis identify their country with it, but the King can no longer be an absolute ruler. He must be firm but fair. (Which seems to suggest he’s neither.)
He points to achievements brought about by strong policies resolutely applied.
Forestry conservation has been a big success since local people were given their own areas of forest to administer, the hydroelectric programme, building of roads, water improvement projects. All give him hope.
‘And,’ he concludes, ‘Nepal’s press has never been freer.’
We’re turning into the bus park below the walls of Bhaktapur.
‘The Prime Minister has been sacked, parliament is in limbo, but the press is free.’
The day that started promisingly is growing grey and gloomy as, having paid our $10 fee to enter the city, we climb up the steps and in through a narrow, rose-brick gateway.
For Basil it’s a nostalgic return. Much of Bertolucci’s Little Buddha, on which he worked as both actor and stills photographer, was shot in Bhaktapur. Though smaller than Kathmandu or Patan, Bhaktapur, whose name means ‘city of devotees’, once boasted 99 separate chowks. A powerful earthquake in 1934 did serious damage and now only five of these grand courtyards are left. That they are here at all is largely due to a German-sponsored reconstruction programme. The connection with Nepal seems a curious one, but it goes back a long way. A German Jesuit sent one of the Malla kings of Nepal a telescope as early as 1655. Hitler sent a later king a Mercedes.
As in Patan and, indeed, old Kathmandu itself, there is some glorious work in Bhaktapur. The Sun Dhoka (Golden Gateway) is an arched entrance surrounded by richly ornamented deities covered in gilded, embossed copper. The figures of the gods are still worshipped and I see young Nepalis touching them and then their foreheads as they pass. All over the temple area there are statues and carvings worn shiny by touch. We clamber up into a small, octagonal, carved timber gem called Chyasin Mandap, the Pavilion of the Eight Corners, an 18th-century original, meticulously restored around an earthquake-proof, steel shell. A much grander building stands nearby: Nyatapola, the tallest pagoda in Nepal. Five-tiered and standing 100 feet high, it somehow survived the 1934 earthquake quite unscathed. One might imagine this would increase its attraction for devotees, but when I climb up the long, steep staircase past sculpted ranks of temple guardians - wrestlers, elephants, lions, griffins - I find only dust and a group of street children. Apparently, this magnificent building is dedicated to an obscure Tantric goddess, Siddhi Lakshmi, who very few people have heard of, let alone worship. As the temples rely on rich patrons for their upkeep, Nyatapola remains neglected.
There is hope. Kunda is generally optimistic about the way the old city centres are looked after (all three are UNESCO sites). He’s much less happy about the way modern development is going. The urban sprawl around Kathmandu is, he feels, destroying the identities of the three cities. They are becoming part of a Kathmandu conurbation, which is bad for Nepal. It increases the centralization of wealth and government in the valley, further alienating the country areas, and puts great pressure on limited resources. Water supply is becoming a major problem. The latest proposal is to bring water in direct from a glacier, 15 miles away. It will be the biggest engineering project in Nepal’s history, and if it works it will only bring more people and more money to the central valley, further dividing the country. And it would not go unopposed. Only yesterday, Kunda reminds me, the Maoists destroyed a hydroelectric plant.
On our way back, the insalubrious suburbs, and the congested roads that take us through them, seem to bear out Kunda’s darker prophecies, but life is not all gloom.
He tells the story of sitting next to Prince Charles (of whom he has a very high opinion) at a Nepali banquet. Halfway through the meal Charles upended a full portion of rice wine into his lap.
‘Great embarrassment all round?’
‘No, everything was fine.’ Kunda smiles at the recollection. ‘I told him that was the way we do our dry cleaning here.’
Day Fifty Seven : Kathmandu
To a high-walled, heavily gated, but otherwise reassuringly normal home near the Gurkha headquarters for a reunion with Adrian Griffith, the British Gurkha officer sent to look after us who ended up being abducted himself.
A relief to find him in good health and good spirits. We drink tea in his garden with his admirably phlegmatic wife, who claims never to have worried that he wouldn’t come back. Adrian, whilst refusing to answer what he calls ‘operational questions’, gives us a little more background to what happened that evening when the Maoists called him away from his whisky.
They were taken to an empty house an hour from Lekhani and about five hours later, about midnight, were led deeper into the forest. His escort were not angry but they were insistent, and they had weapons concealed in their shoulder bags.
‘Pistols?’
‘Yes, pistols.’
‘I went to sleep in a very filthy bed from which I received a lot of flea bites.’ (His only injuries, fortunately.)
All the next day was spent talking, or rather, being talked at, by his abductors. On the second day of their captivity, by which time the story was all across the world’s newspapers, word came down from the Maoist high command that Adrian and the others should be released. He feels pretty sure that the local commanders had been reprimanded by their superiors for taking him in the first place.
I asked if he ever felt in real danger. He said his two worries were of the danger of being caught in crossfire if the security forces mounted an operation to free him and the knowledge that a Nepali member of the Gurkha staff, abducted a year before, had been held for seven weeks.
‘I think we were an opportunity target. They came down in order to disrupt the recruiting, realized there was someone more senior from the British Gurkhas there and saw it as a chance to publicize their cause.’