Across Iran's Dasht-e Lut Desert, November 1979

We spent a night in Kerman before driving into the Dasht-e Lut Desert to the amazing mudbrick city of Bam, dominated by the ‘Arg-e Bam’, a massive citadel which was the largest adobe structure in the world, dating back to around 500BC. 

The 'Arg-e Bam', massive ancient mudbrick citadel  of Bam, Iran  1979

The entire old city, mainly in ruins, was completely surrounded by massive mud walls, still largely intact, and was once an important stop on the Silk Road. We spent over an hour exploring and photographing this fascinating site and were the only visitors. I use the past tense when I write that Bam was the largest abode structure in the world, as the Citadel was destroyed in a massive earthquake on 26 December 2003 which killed over 26,000 people in the town. While an international reconstruction process is under way, I doubt if it can ever be restored to its former pre-earthquake glory. 

The ancient mudbrick citadel of Bam, Iran  1979

As we drove on across the flat, featureless Dasht-e Lut Desert on the road to Zahedan, we could see, in the hazy distance, what appeared to be a tower and as we came closer, could see it was built of brick. This is the Mil-e Naderi, a desert marker dating from the 12^th century, whose sole purpose was to guide caravans across this barren plain. As one contemplates this construction, one cannot but help feel an admiration for these early travellers on the Silk Road. They spent weeks of loneliness and hardship, surviving attacks by opportunistic raiders, and having to survive the ravages of one of the many sandstorms for which this area is notorious, traversing these waterless wastes to bring eagerly sought-after goods to the markets of Europe. It must have been with a sense of relief that when they sighted the Mil-e Naderi in the distance, they knew then that they were not hopelessly lost after all.    

Sundowners' Overland coach at Mil-e Naderi marker in the Dasht-e Lut Desert, Iran  1979

             As we progressed through the desert, the road deteriorated further until we came across a section that was under reconstruction. In one off-the-road detour, around a culvert being worked on, we came upon the aftermath of a head-on smash between a bus and a truck. We heard later one person had been killed. It seemed incredible that a fatal head-on crash could happen on this rough detour where it was almost impossible to go fast and there was plenty of room to avoid each other. We were told this was typical of Iranian drivers: everything is in the hands of Allah!

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Excerpt from my book  One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride

Arrival by Truck in the Congo, November 1973

Leaving Bangui we drove to the town of Bangassou from where we took a ferry across the Ubangui River, landing at a tiny place with the delightful name of Ndu. We had a lengthy delay at the ferry. Ahead of us was the Bedford truck of another Overland operator called Siafu. The driver had made the mistake, as he drove off the ferry at Ndu, of attempting to change gear when just the front two wheels were on dry land. The resultant shudder caused by the gear change, and the back weight of the truck had pushed the ferry away from the bank, meaning the Siafu truck was suspended between the river bank and the ferry. It took a bit of head-scratching and innovation before they managed to force the ferry closer to the shore allowing the Bedford to disembark safely. Fortunately, no damage was done. Keith made sure he did not make the same mistake when he drove off the ferry.

Arrival at Ndu on the banks of the Ubangui River, Congo  1973

Zaïre was 0riginally the Belgian Congo and is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is one of the largest countries in Africa and it was certainly a fascinating place. During the colonial days, the Belgians had developed an infrastructure of good roads criss-crossing the country but after independence in 1960, very little maintenance had been carried out and this was soon to become very obvious to us. We had to spend a night in Ndu and woke up to a thick fog, something I found rather surprising in tropical Africa.  It took us most of the morning to clear customs and we had to send our cooking party back across the river to Bangassou to stock up with fresh supplies. We then drove to the small town of Monga to clear immigration and again we were delayed overnight. I noted in my diary that Monga: ‘has a huge mission church on the outskirts, is a real frontier town … some buildings appear to have been burnt out and there was some speculation as to whether they were the result of the Congo troubles ten years ago. It wasn’t hard to imagine mercenaries ravaging a village of this type by fire and sword, rape and plunder!’  Just out of Monga we had to cross a small tributary of the Ubangui by a local ferry. 

Pirogues on the river at Monga, Congo  1973

This time the ferry was made up of three dugout canoes lashed together and large enough to take our Bedford. It had to be propelled across the river by man-power, making use of the river currents and back-eddies. There were several traditional dugout canoes on the river and I was bemused to see one propelled, at speed, by a Yamaha outboard. In the forest, not far from the river, we came upon a dugout still in the process of being adzed from a tree trunk. The lines of the pirogue, surrounded by a mass of wood chips, did not look exactly straight and the hull was still attached to the tree. 

A pirogue being hewn from a rainforest tree, Congo 1973

After crossing the Uele River by another interesting local ferry, the largest yet, we were into the African rainforest and the road deteriorated further; tarmac became non-existent and in lieu of proper culverts, tree trunks formed make-shift bridges over many of the little streams. 

The ferry over the Uele River at Bondo, Congo

This usually involved some tricky manoeuvring to get our vehicles across without mishap; potholes were huge and one morning we pulled out a truck, its Belgian driver saying he had been stuck overnight with one of his back-wheels in an almost bottomless hole!  

The state of the road between Buta & Titule, Congo  1973

To make things even more hazardous, both sides of the road were lined with deep ditches, usually hidden by lush vegetation and our progress was not without incidents!  Most of the towns we passed through had been built around a Catholic Mission and were very much as I had envisaged – dense tropical vegetation surrounded the small settlements, many of the European-style colonial houses now looking much the worse for wear; shops dark and cool inside, but with very little stock.

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

  Excerpt from my paperback One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps by
 Neil Rawlins  now available from Amazon Books

Pago Pago, American Samoa, January 1968

When we left Apia, the famous Samoan hotelier Aggie Grey boarded the Tofua to travel to Auckland. An excited dance troupe performed on the wharf to farewell her.  In the past there had been hearsay rumours that Aggie had been the model for both James Michener’s Bloody Mary in Tales of the South Pacific and Sadie Thompson in Somerset Maugham’s Rain but neither of these rumours were ever substantiated and both highly unlikely. With regards to Somerset Maugham, he visited the Samoas well before Aggie’s time. Aggie had established Aggie Grey’s Hotel in Apia in 1933 and, during World War Two, it had catered for American servicemen stationed in Samoa. It has been a popular institution ever since. Keith and I visited the hotel bar during our time in Apia.

Dance troup performing on the wharf at Apia, January 1968

 Our next port of call was Pago Pago on the island of Tutuila and capital of American Samoa.  This is, perhaps, the best deep-water harbour in the Pacific, and is dominated by Rainmaker Mountain which lived up to its name. The town is one of the wettest in the Pacific and was the inspiration of a short story by Somerset Maugham, appropriately called Rain, written in 1920: “It was not like our soft English rain that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did not pour, it flowed.”

One of the world’s longest single-span cable-cars, built a couple of years earlier to service a TV transmitter, trundled across the harbour and up Mt Alava but unfortunately, for unknown reasons, was not operating on the day of our visit.

The cable car over the harbour at Pago Pago, American Samoa  1968

The Tofua arrived in Pago Pago about the same time as the American cruise ship Mariposa operated by Matson Lines which, along with its sister-ship Monterey, regularly sailed to New Zealand and Australia via the Pacific Islands. Our ship was moored close to the Intercontinental Hotel and we were able to use the hotel swimming pool as a welcome relief from the hot muggy tropical heat. During the morning, we walked along a surprisingly vehicle-clogged road to a park in central Pago Pago to watch as a belated Father Christmas (who had arrived on the Mariposa) distributed presents to a large gathering of excited Samoan children.  

Gathering in central Pago Pago to meet  a belated Father Christmas  January 1968

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

                Excerpt from my book  One Step in Front of the Other - First Steps

A Short Break in the Holy City of Hardwar, Uttarakhand, 1982

I had about ten days before my next group arrived in Delhi, so I took a local bus north to the holy city of Hardwar near where the Ganges leaves the Siwalik Hills, foothills of the Himalayas. Hardwar was off the tourist route and is one of the four holy cities that host a kumbh mela, a huge Hindu pilgrimage of faith, held every four years in one of four cities - Hardwar, Allahabad, Nasik and Ujjain. Each city hosts the Mela once in 12 years. According to Hindu mythology, when the gods churned the milk-ocean at the time of creation, four drops of nectar were splashed to earth each landing by a sacred river. These are the places where the kumbh mela, the "world’s largest congregation of religious pilgrims", are held, and where devotees, now numbering in the tens of millions, congregate for a dip in the sacred rivers. Each site's celebration dates are calculated in advance according to a special combination of zodiacal positions of Sun, Moon, and Jupiter and the festival is held in Hardwar when the sun is in Aquarius.

A bridge over the River Ganges at Hardwar, Uttarakhand

When there is no mela, Hardwar is a quiet, peaceful, rather attractive little town on the Ganges. I wandered through the town, over the river bridges and onto the Hari-ki-Bari bathing ghat where I mingled with the sacred cows and the few pilgrims who were immersing themselves in the river. The town has many associations with the mythological history of the Ganges. This is evident by the number of religious statues in and beside the river. A statue of the sage Kapila sits in the river not far from the ghats, and nearby on the riverbank is a modern statue of the great god Shiva with the goddess Ganga, the personified river, entangled in his hair.

The Hari-ki-Bari Bathing ghat on the Ganges at Hardwar

In legend Kapila, a Vedic sage, was deep in meditation when the 60,000 sons of King Sagara found a missing sacrificial horse next to Kapila’s ashram. Accusing him of theft, Kapila glared at the brothers with an intensity which reduced them to ashes. For the 60,000 sons to attain paradise the waters of the Ganges would have to be brought from heaven to purify their ashes. Several generations later, after years of ascetic penance, King Bhagiratha persuaded the celestial Ganga to descend to earth and the god Shiva agreed to catch the waters in his dreadlocks, as the force of the river’s descent would shatter the world. After spending some time trapped in Shiva’s matted locks, Ganga was released into the seven streams ‘that flowed to the far corners of the earth’ thus allowing the sons of King Sagara to attain Nirvana.

The statue of Shiva with Ganga entangled in his hair, Hardwar

After a couple of days in Hardwar I caught a bus to nearby Rishikesh, a smaller town of ashrams and temples. It is here that the Ganges actually leaves the mountains. I walked to Lakshman Jhula and from the iron suspension bridge I could see the blue clear waters of the tree-lined Ganges tumbling over the shingle banks as the river reached the Indian plains. The river has its origins in an ice cave in a glacier at Gomukh, the cow’s mouth, 13,500 feet up in the Himalayas. I walked along the bank, seeing very few people, to Swarga Ashram, a large centre of yoga and meditation where, I was told, the Beatles had practiced transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late ‘60s. I walked down to the river bank and sat for a while by the sacred river. As I looked around I could understand the mystical attraction Swarga Ashram had to young Western yogis and yoginis. I caught the little open ferry back across the river to Rishikesh and, ultimately, the bus back to Delhi.  

The River Ganges where it leaves the Siwalik Hills, Rishikesh 

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

An excerpt from my book On Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride now available from Amazon Books worldwide.

The Narayani River Ferry, Nepal 1982

An excerpt from my book - One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride

As we were leaving Nepal we had to cross the Narayani River on the Terai, an area of reasonably flat grasslands bordering India. The main road to Bhairahawa, shortly to be renamed Siddharthanagar after the Buddha (Siddhartha Gaitama) who was born in nearby Lumbini, had been realigned and a new bridge was being constructed over the river at Narayanghat near Bharatpur. This road would be a considerable improvement to the original route which had, in the past, been susceptible to rock falls, especially during the heavy monsoon rains. As a temporary measure we would have to take PBA, our Ford coach, by ferry over the river.  This ferry consisted of a couple of open riverboats lashed together with a platform of thick wooden planks placed across the hulls. The propulsion was man-power. The whole operation looked very precarious, but in this part of the world you had to place your trust in the locals – and in luck!

The author (crouching) directing Mr Syd onto the Narayani River ferry

Only one vehicle at a time could be transported. A local bus and a truck went ahead of us. Then it was our turn. Syd, being a skilled driver, placed PBA, perfectly balanced, on the centre of the platform. As the Ford was larger and longer than the local vehicles there was an overhang over each gunwale and it was crucial that both the front and back wheels were placed with precision over each of the boats. We could see Syd, trying to look relaxed, sitting with the paddlers as they propelled PBA into the river.

The coach loaded onto the Narayani River ferry at Narayanghat

 The oarsmen had to make allowance for the river currents and we were half expecting to see PBA perform an automotive version of the Titanic by dipping beneath the murky waters of the Narayani River. The ferry seemed to be going in a completely different direction as the counter-current took hold - after all the other landing was almost directly opposite us, and the ferry was heading away upstream. We could see the oarsmen working hard and the steersman struggling with the large steering oar. 

The coach drifting off in the counter-current on the Narayani River

Then slowly the ferry moved out of the counter-current, into the main stream and with skilful handling by the crew, arrived safely at the landing directly opposite. I, along with the passengers, travelled across the river on the special passenger ferry – also man-powered. Greatly relieved, we were soon on our way to our overnight stop at Bhairahawa. 

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Excerpt from my book  One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride   available now at Amazon

Iraq: From Babylon to Qurna 1979

            Some 85 kilometres south of Baghdad lay the ruins of ancient Babylon, the once great city of Nebuchadnezzar and the place of Jewish exile dating from 597BC. At the time of our visit there was archaeological work in progress, and there had been some restoration work carried out on the great Ishtar Gate where some of the original moulded mud-brick dragons and bulls had been placed in situ.  However most of the ruins appeared untouched and there was speculation as to where the famous ‘Hanging Gardens’ of Nebuchadnezzar, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, were located. Years later Saddam Hussein decided to reconstruct the city to his own egotistical blueprint, desecrating the ancient ruins with inscriptions reading “This was built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq.” After the American invasion, parts of the archaeological site were levelled to provide a landing site for helicopters and a parking area for military vehicles. In retrospect, we were probably one of the last tour groups to see Babylon before its desecration by both Saddam Hussein and the Americans. 

A dragon on the mud-bricks of the Ishtar Gate, Babylon

             A couple of hundred kilometres to the south is the great Ziggurat of Ur, dating from the 21st century BC, and believed to have been dedicated to Nanna, the Sumerian Moon-goddess by King Ur-Nammu. This interesting edifice had been reconstructed from the original materials by the British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1930s. Merv parked the coach at the foot of the great stairway and we all climbed to the top. As we were looking across the obscure ruins of Ur, city of Abraham, we heard a distant voice yelling at us, telling us that we shouldn’t be up there and must come down. On our descent, we were confronted by the local guardian of the site who looked us over, then said we could go back up – we were supposed to check with him first, even though he was not then at the site, but he was friendly enough and there was no problem.  On leaving Ur we were stopped by soldiers of the Iraqi military who insisted we would have to surrender our camera films as this was a military site. Of course, we argued as we could see nothing military about the ruins of Ur. The soldiers were young and to be fair, one did phone his superior and sought advice but no, he was told that we had to surrender our films. I had just started a new film, so I opened the back of my camera and a couple of the group surrendered unexposed film. This seemed to satisfy the soldier, who then said that we could go back and retake the photos. My reply is censored! At the time I thought this military presence near an archaeological site rather strange, in fact we had not even seen the military encampment until they stopped us, but just over a year later Iraq invaded Iran, beginning what is now known as the First Gulf War. So this was quite possibly the beginning of the Iraqi military build up for that war.

The Overland coach at the ziggurat at Ur

            We drove south to the town of Nasiriya which I noted was a ‘grubby town’. The directions I had from a previous trip, was to drive south, into the desert and at a crossroad where the arm of a sign was broken, to turn left. We found this without a problem and after crossing a rather dodgy pontoon bridge over a tributary of the Euphrates, we spent the night sleeping in the semi-desert near a brickworks not far from the small town of Fuhud.

The next morning we entered the realm of the Marsh Arabs. These fascinating people occupied, as they had for centuries, the swampy marshland of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers which converge at nearby Qurna. From the road we could see many of the reed houses, for which this area was famous, set amid tall rushs and surrounded by the marshy waters of the swamps. Mashoofs, the local gondola-like canoes, were being poled along channels in the marshes, carrying reeds for thatching and the weaving of mats. Piles of woven mats were stacked neatly along the road, presumably awaiting collection. While we attempted to talk with a group of children, a man walked past carrying a number of fish strung together. These were the Central Marshes and life carried on the way it had for centuries. After the 1991 Shiite Revolt in southern Iraq that followed the Second Gulf War, Saddam Hussein, in an act of revenge – the Marsh Arabs were Shiites – drained the Marshes forcing most of these interesting people into refugee camps, mainly in Iran, ostensibly turning the area into desert. These Central Marshes were some of the worst affected. After the American invasion and Saddam Hussein’s downfall, the marshes have been re-flooded and are showing a rapid recovery, but few of the over 500,000 Marsh Arabs have yet returned. This was another glimpse into an age-old culture that I feel privileged to have seen, albeit it ever so briefly, before it disappeared, possibly forever.

Dwellings of the Marsh Arabs in the swamps of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers

We stopped at Qurna where the Tigris and Euphrates meet and where, at least in some traditional beliefs, the Garden of Eden was said to have been situated. A tree, known as Adam’s tree, was said to mark the spot where Abraham prayed in 2000BC and symbolises the Garden of Eden.  This tree is supposedly a descendant of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’, from which Eve, at the encouragement of the serpent, ‘saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked’. [Genesis 3:6-7].

Recently I came upon an article, dated May 28, 2003, by Anthony Browne of the Times UK. It is entitled ‘War Takes Its Toll on The Garden of Eden’ and begins: “PARADISE is not what it used to be. Dozens of dead fish float by in a river that reeks of sewage. Dirty sheep chew at the few tufts of grass that survive in the baking earth. Litter swirls around in the dust. The graffiti screams in Arabic: “Down with America! Down with Israel!” Welcome to the Garden of Eden. Or, as the locals call it, Janat Adan. In its centre, the showpiece: the Adam tree, no longer bearing apples, now just a dead, gnarled trunk that rises out of cracked concrete. There is no serpent hanging from its branches, but children, who use it as a climbing frame.” While I do not think anyone believed this was actually the site of the Garden of Eden, or that this was “Adam’s Tree’, it is very sad to see it described like this a little over 20 years after our visit. 

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography 

Except from: One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride

First Visit to Kathmandu in 1970

If Singapore was my introductory culture shock, Kathmandu was the ultimate. I noted in my diary at the time that it was like being transported back to ‘medieval days’. Other travellers I have spoken to who visited Kathmandu in the 60s and 70s felt the same way. In 1970 Nepal was still a mysterious kingdom high in the Himalayas which few people visited, hippies excepted. Of course, there was the connection with New Zealand through the work of Sir Edmund Hillary in the construction of schools in the remote Himalayan foothills. Mahendra was king and Kathmandu was the end of the so-called hippy trail which ran across Asia from Europe. The country had only opened up to visitors in the early 1960s some years after the first road over the mountains from India, the Tribhuvan Rajpath, had been constructed. In February 1970 the Hetauda to Kathmandu Ropeway carried the bulk of goods up to Kathmandu from India and there was still a Government hashish shop from where the pernicious weed could be purchased legally. The aptly named ‘Freak’ Street was buzzing with Nepalese … and with hippies.  Kathmandu was then the ultimate destination.

One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps

Although I visited Kathmandu many times in later years it was this first visit, this first impression, which was the most memorable. On that first afternoon I walked through Thamel and into Durbar Square. Old wooden and brick buildings lurched crazily over narrow streets. Ancient temples – Buddhist and Hindu – existed side by side with the images of gods and goddesses, some abnormally fierce with glaring eyes staring frighteningly at passers-by. Newaris, Tibetans, Sherpas, Indians all intermingled in a mélange that fascinated me. There was very little motorised traffic, the bulk of the non-pedestrian transport being bicycles and bicycle-rickshaws and even they, at times, could make very little progress through the milling pedestrian crowds. A flute seller tried to tempt me with his bamboo flutes while a labourer pushed past with a great stack of partially cured hides on his back. Kathmandu was the first place I encountered the ubiquitous street beggars with the children being particularly persistent. It was also the first place that I had seen homeless people sleeping in the street. As I walked back to the hotel one night I came across a young boy and girl, presumably brother and sister of no more than 5 or 6, asleep on the pavement under a covering of old sacks with their dog snuggled up beside them. It was a heart-breaking scene when seen for the first time.  

First afternoon in Thamel, Kathmandu

Over the next few days I explored Kathmandu, accompanied by members from the Overland group I was joining.  Life in the back streets was particularly fascinating, once you got use to the fact that many residents urinated and defecated in the drains and performed their daily ablutions quite openly. Women washed clothes, or their hair, under roadside hand pumps, completely oblivious to the children playing, the dogs and chickens fossicking and the passers-by going about their other business. Basic shoulder-yokes were commonly used for carrying baskets, pails and water cans, etc. Freak Street, or Jhhonchen Tole to use the Nepalese name, was the centre of Western hippy culture in Kathmandu. Small shops, cheap hotels, seedy bars and dope dens, had gained it a notorious reputation over the years and the more refined travellers tended to avoid the area, particularly at night.

In a cluster of ramshackle buildings near Durbar Square is the unobtrusive Palace of Kumari Ghar, the Living Goddess. Kumari means ‘virgin’ in both Nepali and Sanskrit and a little girl, the Living Goddess, is believed to be an incarnation of Taleju, another name for the Hindu warrior goddess Durga. Reminiscent of a vestal virgin of ancient Rome, this little girl is selected esoterically by Buddhist priests through a series of stringent tests, which show the close association between the Buddhists and Hindus in Nepal. In her final test, the little girl must spend a night alone in a room with the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffaloes without showing fear. Except for the ten days of the annual chariot festival the Kumari, or living goddess, is confined to her palace with a woman guardian seeing to all her needs and performing the maternal role. Her family can visit rarely, if at all. As soon as the Kumari shows signs of pubescence and with the onset of menstruation, a new virgin is selected and the current Kumari returns to her family. On my visit in 1970 the Kumari was a pretty little girl of about 5 years old. Clad in a scarlet robe, her hair tied in a topknot with a scarlet ribbon, her brow overlaid with vermilion paste upon which was painted the agni chakchuu, or fire eye, a symbol of her special powers of perception. Her striking little eyes were outlined in the traditional kohl, or lamp black. She appeared briefly on a balcony looking down benignly on me and my companion with the wide-eyed innocence of the young, before being ushered into another room, out of sight. Her appearance created little disturbance among the other ladies in the grubby courtyard, one washing clothes in a soapy bowl, another searching for nits in her daughter’s hair.

On a hill overlooking Kathmandu city is Swayambhunath Stupa, also known as the Monkey Temple. A long flight of stairs leads to this magnificent structure, a large golden stupa dating from the 5^th century AD. Painted upon each of the four sides of the main stupa are the eyes of the Buddha. These glaring eyes are symbolic of Buddha's all-pervading presence. In place of a nose there is a representation of the number one in the Nepali alphabet, signifying that the single way to enlightenment is via the Vajrayana path of Buddhism prevalent in Nepal. The third eye, signifying the wisdom of looking within, is depicted on the forehead between the two eyes and no ears are shown as it is said the Buddha is not interested in hearing prayers in praise of himself. Surrounding the Golden Temple are numerous shrines, chaityas or small stupas, Tantric statues, prayer wheels, Shiva lingams, and a large Vajra or sacred thunderbolt, symbol of the Vajrana form of Buddhism. There is a Hindu temple to Harati, Goddess of smallpox which signifies the intermingling of Hinduism and Buddhism; Buddhists have no incarnation in their own pantheon to protect against the dreaded smallpox, so they have adopted the Hindu deity for protection. Langur monkeys have free reign here, hence Swayambhunath is often referred to by Westerners as the ‘Monkey Temple’.   

The Golden Stupa of Swayambhunath, Kathmandu

 The legend of the origin of Swayambhunath is rather beautiful. Once upon a time the Kathmandu Valley was a vast lake from which grew a lotus. The valley became known as ‘Swayambhu’, the self-created.  After seeing a vision of a lotus, the Bodhisattva Manjushri travelled to Swayambhu to worship the lotus. He saw that the valley would make a good place for settlement, so he cut a gorge through the mountains through which the water drained. The lotus became the hill, the flower became the golden Swayambhunath Stupa and the drained lake became the fertile Kathmandu Valley now made suitable for human habitation. With a companion I struggled to the top of the stairs, avoiding the squabbling monkeys clamouring for food. Swayambhunath is a serene retreat, certainly a place of peace after the hustle and bustle of downtown Kathmandu. Many Tibetans, refugees from their homeland not so very far away across the mountains, come here to pray and to spin the numerous prayer wheels.

During my stay in Kathmandu I hired a bicycle, so was able to range further from the city centre and it was on one of these excursions that I met my first sadhu, or holyman, at a delightful little Hindu temple at Buddhanilkanth. He sat, serenely in meditation, in front of a small wood fire in a small cell and allowed me to take his photo.  Outside women devotees placed marigolds in the pool of the Reclining Vishnu. Vishnu is one of the major gods of the Hindu Trimurti, or Trinity. I knew very little about the complexities of the Hindu religion in those days, but soon learnt that the Hindu trinity was made up of the major gods Brahma, the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva, the destroyer. To complicate things, each of these deities have many manifestations all known by different names, as do their consorts, Sarasvati, Lakshmi and Parvati. All the above ‘gods’ are an aspect of Brahman, the Absolute, - ‘neither good nor evil, the source of all things’.  It was to take quite a few trips to India for me to even begin to understand the rudiments of this fascinating religion.   

Further away from the city, in the heart of the rural Kathmandu Valley, is the largest and most important Buddhist shrine in the Valley. This is Bodhnath Stupa, the most sacred shrine of Buddhists in Nepal and, like Swayambhunath, has a large Tibetan community living in its vicinity. The bowl of the Stupa is larger than Swayambhunath and the golden tower is stepped in pyramid fashion with hundreds of prayer flags fluttering in the breeze.  Like Swayambhunath, the all-seeing eyes of the Buddha glare out from all four sides of the stupa. At Bodhnath I had an audience with the 3^rd Chini Lama, the head Lama of all Nepal. The Chini Lama was once powerful in the temporal affairs of Nepal, but as a result of modernisation, his influence was now purely religious. While I remember that he was worldly wise I can remember very little of our conversation. I did hear later than he was regarded as a bit of a rogue, a known liar and cheat who had spent time in prison for illegal money dealings. While I was with him he passed on a globule of opium to a couple of hippies then told me how evil the stuff was!

Bodhnath Stupa in the Kathmandu Valley

Bodhnath is surrounded by richly cultivated fields, which I had cycled through on my journey from the city, passing through some impressive areas of rice terracing. I noticed many of the rural dwellings had walls covered with cow dung and straw patties drying in the sun for future use as fuel, and saw a number of women making these patties, ‘up to their elbows in the filthy, stinking mixture of cow shit and straw.’    

I returned to Kathmandu via Pashupatinath, the Bagmati River site where the local Hindu residents are cremated after death. This is the most important Hindu temple to the god Shiva in Nepal and is a huge complex of small shrines and temples. Only Hindus born in Nepal or India can enter the main complex. I was able to view the temple from the opposite bank of the Bagmati. Near the entrance I came across a group of sadhus, wild looking characters sitting on a bench. The wildest of them approached me and to my surprise, in a very cultured English voice asked me from where I came. He surprised me by knowing quite a lot about New Zealand.

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

This extract is from my book, One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps now available from Amazon.