Nepal, Kathmandu 2 (Garbage, Monkey Temple, Guru)

November 8, 2010

Early in the morning we fortified ourselves at a “German Bakery”. The roof offered a “great” view of the shopping street.

Granted, the view was partly blocked by the “meticulous” wiring, but that was no less interesting in its own right. Today’s sightseeing target was Kathmandu’s Monkey Temple. To soak up a bit of the surroundings and the atmosphere, we set off to find it on foot.
Kathmandu is quite a bit different from your average European city. It’s loud, hectic, and there’s hustle and bustle everywhere. That alone hasn’t given me a real culture shock, though… not yet. As we asked our way through the alleys, we drifted further and further from the tourist quarter, and some people gave us curious looks. We came to a river and a chill ran down my spine.

Notice anything about this picture? First of all: a really beautiful view over Kathmandu. All those little houses against the lovely mountain scenery – a great view. On second glance, you might notice the river. So what are all those colourful things in it?

Garbage of every kind! In the background the beautiful mountains, the blue sky and the city skyline. In the foreground the trash-choked river, reeking to high heaven.

People were washing clothes in the middle of the filth,…

…pigs were tucking into the man-made garbage islands. The sight and the smell were unbelievably revolting.

No matter where we walked, whenever a river crossed our path, it was recklessly choked with garbage and the stench was enough to turn your stomach. Looking back, I can’t remember ever having seen such an appalling cityscape. Why do people trash their own surroundings? There are surely plenty of answers: misguided policies, growth that’s too fast, no awareness or no education on the subject. But is that tolerable? No, not in my view. It’s common sense to keep your surroundings in good shape for future generations. If ordinary people have no other way to survive, the government has to come up with something. But to simply accept something like this? That’s not acceptable, and it has nothing to do with a different culture either! It can’t be right that other countries have more than five different bins outside the front door while here everything gets dumped behind the house. Not only does this make fresh drinking water from the surrounding mountains undrinkable, it also creates man-made breeding grounds for disease with unforeseeable consequences.
Well, …once again it paid off to stray from the tourist trail and see reality – with all its beautiful but also shocking sides. After that glimpse, we’d better move on to the nicer sides of Kathmandu.

Along the way we kept discovering smaller temples, until after about an hour we…

…arrived at the foot of the Monkey Temple, also known as Swayambhunath. Along the middle 100 steps, about two dozen vendors were touting all kinds of kitsch and “handmade” stuff. A few random test hagglings got the price down by about 70-80% – still too expensive for what was on offer.

A few hundred steps later, a breathtaking view over the Kathmandu Valley opened up.

And sure enough, the Monkey Temple’s namesakes came into view. Hundreds of these cute little critters lived here, completely unbothered by their close relatives, merrily scampering all over the temple complex.

Looking at it, you’d never guess that the Monkey Temple is one of the two oldest Buddhist temple complexes in the world. Everything was in really excellent shape – the entrance fees (four times the price for foreigners) are obviously well invested. Around the temple there were dozens of vendors again – in little huts and in front of them. Here, though, the haggling rate was much better, so I picked up a few souvenirs here and there. In one shop, however, bargaining proved tricky. The shop lady had a fixed price for a figurine and flatly refused to come down. I politely declined and had a look at the shop’s other products. The singing bowls caught my eye – they’re sold on every corner in Kathmandu, and nowhere more so than here at the Monkey Temple.
Hey presto, there was Kesh at my side. Kesh was the shop lady’s extremely friendly husband, with a cheerful, impish grin. He told me how he had spent many years learning to play the singing bowl perfectly under the famous guru [forgot the name…] and was now a guru at it himself. Wow… a singing bowl guru… This just had to be interesting. I got into the conversation. After all, there was a real-life guru standing in front of me – just like back in Zak McKracken. ;) Over the next 1.5 hours he showed me the different ways of playing this marvel. Not all singing bowls are created equal, you know! After all, every singing bowl has a soul of its own, and it takes years before you can play it perfectly. A really good one can of course be mastered faster, provided it suits the player’s character. And only when a singing bowl is played well does it unfold its calming, healing, stimulating and fulfilling effect. Kesh went on to tell me how a singing bowl can be perfectly incorporated into lovemaking and is a tremendous enrichment for a relationship. His wife, who stood next to us the whole time, was thrilled and nodded in agreement. Well, in my last travel report I did write how important education is, so why not in the field of “deep relaxation with singing bowl Kamasutra”? So I let Guru Kesh initiate me into his secret tricks and became his singing bowl novice. I was shown how to play the singing bowl standing, sitting, lying down, with water in the bowl and/or mystical “Oooohhhhms”, and much more. All in all, I have to say these wondrous music bowls surprised me in a very positive way. On top of that, my singing bowl guru had a truly outstanding talent for presenting all their benefits extremely convincingly. The vibrations really did go right through me.
Kesh had already overrun his closing time by an hour and didn’t want to stop teaching me at all. But his wife pointed out that they really had to close up now. OK, he thanked me for my time and wished me all the best on my path through life. … What? That’s it? He doesn’t want to sell me a singing bowl??? He can’t just let me wander off without a singing bowl… How am I supposed to try out all the techniques I’ve learned and find out whether it really enriches various areas of life? Secretly, I had already set my eye on a singing bowl with what I thought was the most beautiful sound. I asked him the price. Instead of answering, he assured me that he hadn’t given the demonstration with the intention of selling me anything and that I shouldn’t feel I now had to buy a bowl. He had enjoyed showing me a few of the singing bowl’s uses. …I was speechless… His wife was packing things up and he helped her. … Was this a sales tactic or not? After all, we were in the most touristy of all the touristy little corners of Nepal. Honest vendors with no ulterior motives – unthinkable. I tried once more to find out the price of the bowl I wanted. He looked me up and down and asked whether I really appreciated this bowl. After a few seconds of intense scrutiny, he answered the question for himself with a yes and told me the price. Once again I was surprised that the price – compared to my previous haggling experiences – was perfectly reasonable. Of course I had to check whether it really was the lowest price and knocked off another 20%. At first he smirked, and then he broke into a big, heartfelt smile. He had already sensed that this very singing bowl was the one I liked best, and he felt it would enrich my life. Only for that reason would he sell me the bowl at a lower price, since he normally didn’t give discounts. On top of that, he threw in four more felt mallets, all different – the right mallet for every situation, he said… Truly impressed by the last 1.5 hours and with my new, kilo-heavy acquisition, I left the shop. Was it too much to pay for a metal bowl? Well, let’s put it this way: a trip to the cinema with your partner plus popcorn, nachos and Coke costs roughly the same, and compared to the prices in Western esoteric shops it was an absolute steal. Even if I threw the bowl away right now, I’d still have had some unforgettable, great entertainment (far better than a cinema trip to some run-of-the-mill special-effects trash) and, who knows, maybe with long-term effects too. Of course I had no intention whatsoever of throwing my singing bowl away, but now I definitely had to send a parcel home from Nepal. With my backpack + bowl + all the souvenirs, I couldn’t have walked another hundred metres anyway…

Souvenir photo: novice Mathias with singing bowl guru Kesh. If you’re now wondering what a singing bowl actually is: Wikipedia has the answer. I couldn’t help smirking a little at the matter-of-fact wiki explanation. And even if it’s all just a myth – the story will definitely stay with me as an unforgettable memory, and as a keepsake my singing bowl looks great in any case. :)

Outside, darkness had already fallen and the number of monkeys had casually doubled. (Biologically speaking, the pale primate with the blue fur derivative in the foreground doesn’t belong to the same family as the ones you can see in the background…)

We took in the view of Kathmandu by night for a while and then headed back.

To top it all off, we met up with Michael and Ingrid in the evening. The Mt. Everest night-hiking crew was back together. Just a few days ago we were in the freezing cold at the world’s highest mountain, and now, more or less by chance, here we were in the middle of Kathmandu. It’s a small world, no doubt about it.

Further reading:

1. Swayambhunath – Also commonly known as the Monkey Temple, one of the oldest Buddhist temple complexes in the world
2. Kathmandu Valley – Once a large lake
3. Singing bowls – Traditionally kitchenware, now part of Western esotericism
4. Primates – An order in biology that also includes humans