Kathmandu street scenes

We had several days on our own in Kathmandu, so we decided to explore some of the city on foot and promptly got lost in the jumble of narrow streets that wind their way in every direction, except the one you want to go in. Next day we armed ourselves with a map and fared much better.

The first interesting sight we came across was a Hindu shrine with a fairly large tank, (a man made holding pond, typically with a monument on a central island) on which a couple of turtles were sunning themselves. The odd thing was the street dog, lying in the only tiny bit of shade on the island with no apparent way for him to get out of the pond. We wondered how he got there, and were concerned, but to our relief, he was gone the next day.
We also came across this old Banyon tree growing right out of the roof of a small shrine. Note the policeman, which you encounter everywhere, sometimes with not much more to do than smoke a cigarette.

These men, perched on top of this large wooden cart, that was in my guess 40 ft. tall, were assembling it in preparation for a Hindu new year parade. The whole assembly fit together like a giant set of Lincoln logs.

Many of the buildings had a lot of ornate decorations in brass and carved wood.

Street vendors were numerous. Here a lady has set up her sewing machine on a busy bridge, next to the fruit and vegetable seller, and the "mini-mart" under the umbrella.

This picture was taken from our guest house window to show how most people get their water. This well is dug down below street level, where the women collect the water in large containers, which they have to carry back up several flights of steep stairs. Later on our trek we would see people hauling water like this for long distances, up to their isolated mountain homes.

As in India, motorcycles are a major means of transportation. We often see whole families on one bike, or crazy items carried, but don't often have the chance to get a picture as they go whizzing by. Char got lucky this time as these guys were loading up this over sized carpet for delivery. The last we saw of them, they were holding up traffic, with blaring horns, as they wound their way through the busy streets. The driver must have had a pretty stiff neck by the time they reached their destination.