I didn't know what I was buying. It was made in what was then East Germany and I quite like the pictures that it produced. To a certain extent it goes to show what happens if there is less of a restriction on the number of photos one can take. Honestly, there isn't enough film made to capture all the possible photo opportunities in Nepal.
Anyone paying attention will have noticed the very slow rate that I have been posting things recently. This is caused entirely because there are too many pictures and they were uploaded in the wrong order. I made the mistake of scanning all the negatives in one go and quickly uploaded them in bulk. This left me with a problem but I think I am getting there now.
As far as I can tell it is now Sunday 6 January 1991. My W H Smith filofax page says "Epiphany" and I think it is also the Orthodox Christian or Coptic Christmas Eve. It was just another day in Kathmandu.
On this day I was on a mission. My aim was find the Burmese Embassy. I wanted to see whether I could get a visa to visit the country where my dad's mother was born and where his dad met her. The LP Guide said the Embassy was up in Patan so I returned there but my search was fruitless and it seems I just went back to Kathmandu. The notes say "in short, nothing".
I think I was in a kind of rut. I wasn't actually doing anything. It is a bit of a waste to travel to the roof of the world (or within sight of it) and achieve so little that all you can write is "Up to Patan - fruitless search for Burmese Emb. Back to Kathmandu - in short nothing"
The next day, Christmas Day in Egypt is even worse. All it says is that I moved to the Nama Buddha Guest House and shopped for pullovers "etc". I am pretty sure that I did buy a couple of pullovers. Black and white and grey with snowflakes or stars across the shoulders and chest. They looked like they would be cool but in fact they weren't very well knitted and never looked very good on me. I did buy some stuff in Kathmandu. I'll mention it later.
I throw these pictures in not being very sure where they were taken. They could have been taken in Kathmandu or in Patan. An expert on the Temples would be able to tell us which Temple is represented.
Perhaps it is an important temple and perhaps it is not. What it shows is that the closer you look the more there is to see.
Check out the carving above the doorway. Perhaps this is a temple devoted to Kali. She seems to be depicted but then so does Garuda.
The roof struts may be a clue. They are a bit naughty.
I think I just must have wandered around for some time and eventually retired to my hotel. This was aimless.
It is a super chilled out place. Ambling along the street I remember now the feeling of being quite at ease with the place and just enjoying the ambience. I have a memory of walking along the street and somewhere around the corner or just up ahead was someone playing the theme to Maine Pyar Kyar on a wooden flute.
It seems easy to imagine how easily one might become marooned up there. That Italian girl I met on the first day had succumbed to something stronger too but the streets of Kathmandu are like some kind of opiate. Time becomes irrelevant. It might be Christmas Day but who cares? It doesn't seem to have much of a bearing on anything anything there.
