On our final day in Nepal, we were kind of operating in panic mode.
We’d spent so much time seeing so many different parts of Nepal that we’d left almost no time whatsoever to explore the capital city of Kathmandu. We had planned to do so the day before but were distracted by the historic town of Panuati and the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Bhaktapur and so had no time to see the sights of Nepal.
To remedy that, we booked a driver for the day and set out to see as much of the sights as possible. Due to traffic, we decided to prioritise the main sights and start off with Swayambhunath – Kathmandu’s famous monkey temple.
The reason why the temple is known as the monkey temple is pretty obvious as soon as you arrive – the monkeys are everywhere.
They’re surprisingly well behaved though after getting chased by a monkey in Singapore (and being told on a different occasion in Singapore not to look at a monkey in the eye), I maintained a very healthy distance from whichever monkeys we saw.
We headed up to the stairs in search of the stupa and before long, you arrive at a square where you can see the stupa in the distance.
The stupa is impressive to see and is a really important sight here. The locals all come here and although our driver is parked in the car park up on the hill, you can walk up a flight of stairs to get here.
We walked around the area, stopping every so often to roll a prayer wheel before carrying on.
The view over Kathmandu is incredible too and definitely worth heading up here for.
We wandered around for a bit before, after looking at the time, rushing back down to our car in search of the next sight in Kathmandu!
We were distracted when we got back down to the entrance by the monkeys here though.
After seeing that the monkeys seemed to have very little interest in running after people, we went to check them out – only to be delighted by how the monkeys were pretty much turning the pool at the entrance into something of a diving session.
Every so often you’d see one monkey or a couple of them actually, leap really high and land into the water with a splash. It was just so bizarre watching them enjoy their diving and subsequent swimming through the pool – very unlike any other monkey behaviour I’ve observed anywhere else.
The monkeys here are considered as holy too and people do actually stop to feed them!
But enough about monkey’s we had to hurry off to our next sight in Kathmandu – Boudhanath stupa.
More on that in the next post!
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