The Seven Heritage Sites of Kathmandu Valley: What the Lists Miss

The Kumari is not allowed to smile. She is not allowed to cry. She appears at the window of Kumari Ghar, at Kathmandu Durbar Square, and gives the crowd below nothing except her presence. The crowd photographs her. This is darshan. Former Kumaris consistently report difficulty walking for years after retirement, because they spent their years in office being carried.

Kathmandu Durbar Square: the goddess who cannot smile

The square most visitors see in Kathmandu is the one that survived the 2015 earthquake and the one that has been under reconstruction since. The nine-storey Basantapur Tower fell. Kasthamandap, the pavilion from which Kathmandu takes its name, collapsed. Kasthamandap reopened in 2022, rebuilt in wood by a team of Newari craftsmen working from historic plans, though the debate about whether it constitutes a restoration or a replica has not been settled.

The Kumari Ghar, the palace where the living goddess resides, did not fall. The current Kumari is a girl selected in early childhood by a council of priests. The selection criteria include 32 physical characteristics and the ability to remain calm while ritual objects, including buffalo heads and men in masks, are carried past her in a dark room at night. She is considered a manifestation of Taleju, the royal goddess of the Malla kings. When she menstruates for the first time, the goddess departs. She returns to her family as a private citizen, with a government pension and a reputation that, historically, has made marriage difficult.

Whether this constitutes a living tradition or a stolen childhood is debated publicly in Nepal, with more intensity than most foreign coverage of the Kumari suggests. The debate is worth knowing about before you stand beneath the window.

Patan Durbar Square: the materials are the argument

Patan, now a district of greater Kathmandu, has the most intact of the three durbar squares. The 2015 earthquake damaged Hari Shankar Temple and the area near the Krishna Mandir, but the overall complex survived more intact than Kathmandu's.

What Patan has that the other squares do not is a concentration of metalwork with no equivalent in the region. The Patan Museum, inside the old royal palace, holds bronze that was cast in workshops a short walk from where it is now displayed, by craftsmen whose families have been working the same trade for fifteen generations. The ceremonial doors are bronze. The strut carvings are wood. The tympanums above the temple entrances are copper repoussé. In Patan, the materials are not decoration. They are the argument.

Bhaktapur Durbar Square: the city, not the entrance

Bhaktapur is eighteen kilometres east of Kathmandu. It is the only one of the three durbar squares without a living royal palace: the Malla kings who built it are gone, and the city has been maintained by the people who stayed. The entry fee for foreign visitors is $15. The money funds conservation. Locals will tell you this often, and they are not wrong.

What Bhaktapur offers that the other two squares cannot is the city surrounding the square. Talako Tole, the pottery square, is three minutes' walk away. The 55-Window Palace, named for its 55 intricately carved windows, was built by Bhupatindra Malla in 1427. The juju dhau, the king's curd, has been made in Bhaktapur since at least the Malla period: thicker and sweeter than standard yoghurt because of the clay pot it ferments in. A visitor with two hours will see the square and leave. The city asks for a day.

Pashupatinath: the question the site asks

Non-Hindu visitors are not permitted inside the main Pashupatinath temple. The golden spire is visible from across the Bagmati River, from the terraced steps where the cremations take place. The ghats are open.

The cremations happen at the water's edge. The body is carried on a bamboo frame by male relatives of the deceased, wrapped in white or orange, and placed on the stone platforms. The platform closest to the temple is reserved for royalty and priests. The others are arranged by caste. A cremation takes three to four hours.

Visitors watch from the opposite bank. There is no barrier and no guide who will prevent you from photographing. This is the question the site asks that no other site on the list asks: what constitutes respectful witness? The Nepali word for the act of beholding something sacred is darshan. Whether what happens at the Pashupatinath ghats is darshan when you are a foreigner with a camera is not settled. The people conducting the cremation will tell you which positions are acceptable, if you ask.

Boudhanath: a Tibetan city inside Kathmandu

Boudhanath is the largest stupa in Nepal. At 36 metres tall with a circumference of 120 metres, it takes five minutes to walk around at a normal pace. During morning prayer, when hundreds of monks and lay practitioners circumambulate clockwise, it takes longer.

The neighbourhood that formed around the stupa is not part of the original complex. It grew over several decades as Tibetan refugees arrived in Nepal, beginning after 1959. There are more than 50 monasteries within walking distance of the stupa. The restaurants serve Tibetan food. The shopkeepers speak Tibetan. The prayer flags are Tibetan. Boudhanath is a Tibetan city inside Kathmandu, and the stupa is the reason it formed here rather than somewhere else. They arrived together and have remained that way.

Swayambhunath: what was here before the religion

The stupa at Swayambhunath sits on a hill above the western edge of the Valley. The hill is called Swayambhu: self-arisen. According to the Swayambhu Purana, the Valley was once a lake, a lotus grew from the water, and when the water drained the lotus remained. The stupa marks where it stood.

Archaeologists date the construction to the 5th century CE. The hill and its ritual importance are older than that. The 365 steps to the top are inhabited by rhesus macaques, which has given the site its tourist name. The macaques are there because the site has been continuously inhabited for long enough that the monkeys became part of the community. The stupa itself predates the Tibetan Buddhism it now represents in most visitors' mental models. It is a Vajrayana site that was already ancient when Tibetan Buddhism arrived.

Changu Narayan: the question on the struts

Changu Narayan is 22 kilometres northeast of Kathmandu, a 45-minute drive and a 20-minute walk up a ridge. It is the least visited of the seven sites. It is also the oldest.

The temple dates to 323 CE in its earliest documented form. The courtyard is smaller and quieter than the durbar squares, and it contains Licchavi-period stone sculpture considered among the finest in South Asia, including a fifth-century image of Vishnu Vikranta that art historians place among the masterpieces of the region's iconography.

On the wooden struts supporting the temple eaves, there are erotic carvings. Several explanations have been offered. One holds that the goddess of lightning is a virgin and will not strike a building where she must witness sexual imagery. Another holds that they were pedagogical, placed where young men would see them before entering the priesthood. A third holds that they are Tantric representations of states of consciousness rather than physical acts. None of these has been confirmed. The carvings have been there since at least the 17th century, and the question they raise is more interesting than most of what the seven sites' entry fees buy.

Changu Narayan receives around 500 visitors on a good weekend. Boudhanath receives 3,000. The justification for that imbalance is not obvious.