Nepal at peace

THE all-seeing eyes of Buddha stare blankly over Katmandu’s Palace Square from a massive, wooden portal. The door is shut tight. But standing here on the very day in November when Maoist rebels signed a peace accord ending 10 years of turmoil and isolation in Nepal, I could almost hear the giant door crack open, bidding visitors back.

A Hindu adage says guests are like gods. But travelers have largely stayed away since 1996 when Maoist insurgents began a terror campaign. Rebels blockaded roads, bombed tourist areas and demanded money from trekkers in the mountains. The U.S. embassy in Katmandu advised citizens to avoid Nepal, and the Peace Corps suspended operations. Then in 2001 the king and nine members of his family were massacred in the royal palace by the crown prince.

The chain of tragedies seemed almost unreal, especially to the many travelers who, over the years, have become deeply attached to Nepal. As events unfolded, they waited, hoping for peace.

I booked a trip to Nepal -- my first -- last summer, about the time insurgents agreed to lay down their arms. Since then, negotiations between the government and the Maoists have remained on track. A peace accord was signed Nov. 21, and visitors have started returning.

With 75% of the country covered with mountains, including many of the world’s tallest peaks -- among them 29,035-foot Mt. Everest -- Nepal has always figured high on the master list of dream destinations. Its closure to outsiders during the Rana clan’s regime from 1846 to 1951 only piqued interest.

The first visitors who trickled in after that found marvels quite apart from the Himalayas, including the soulful, straightforward Nepalese.

The still largely feudal mountain kingdom was undeveloped but breathtakingly colorful. Its ethnically diverse population of about 27 million, including Gurungs and Chettris from the west, high-mountain Sherpas, and Newars who dwell in the Katmandu Valley, were ruled by a monarchy and organized in castes, but they coexisted.

The myriad faces of Nepal are nowhere more apparent than in the fertile and temperate Katmandu Valley, which is ringed by terraced rice paddies. The high Himalayas that attract trekkers are about 50 miles north but seldom visible from the city because of clouds and pollution.

I spent a week walking through the vibrant, noisy, nerve-rattling capital and touring nearby Bhaktapur and Patan. Since the late 13th century this triad of cities -- now melded together in urban sprawl -- has been the home of Nepal’s kings, who filled it with elaborately decorated palaces and temples. With seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Katmandu Valley would richly reward visitors even if it weren’t in the shadow of the Himalayas.

Closer to Everest

I didn’t want to leave Nepal without seeing Everest. Soon after I arrived I booked a mountain flight in a small plane from the Katmandu airport northeast along the front range of the Himalayas. The aircraft are specially designed to give every passenger a window seat.

Some people find the flights too turbulent. It’s best to leave early because clouds roll in by midmorning, obscuring the mountains. But I did not suffer in the hands of the little local carrier Buddha Air, and I was enlightened about Nepal’s terrain, mostly covered by the Mahabharat foothills separating the jungly Terai to the south from the ice-capped Himalayas.

Minutes after takeoff, I saw 23,771-foot Langtang due north of Katmandu, followed by the eastern part of the amazing Himalayan chain, including flat-topped Menlungtse (23,560 feet), Cho Oyo (26,906 feet) near Nangpa La pass to Tibet, Nuptse (25,790 feet) on Everest’s shoulder and then Everest itself. I’ll never forget it, and just to make sure, a flight attendant came around selling T-shirts that said, “I did not climb Mount Everest, but I touched it with my heart.”

I was back at my hotel by 9 a.m., eating muesli and wondering whether it had all been a dream.

I stayed at the friendly Hotel Tibet in the Lazimpat neighborhood near the foreign embassies and new royal palace. It is owned by a family that immigrated to Nepal after the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1951, when refugees flooded in, adding a new strain to the valley stew. The newcomers were known as keen business people, and they prospered in Tibetan Buddhist communities like the one around Boudhanath Temple on the northeast side of the city.

The women at the hotel’s front desk wear long, traditional Tibetan dresses with colorful aprons. Intricately carved dark wood, tiger rugs and stuffed yaks decorate the lobby. Because I was a hotel guest, I got a 10% discount on a handmade carpet from the family showroom near Boudhanath.

It was a 10-minute walk south from the hotel to the tourist hub of Thamel in central Katmandu. I took a variety of routes, passing vegetable stands, bicycle taxi ranks, littered lots where boys played cricket and intersections clogged with cars that abide by no traffic rules except the survival of the fittest.

Generally my path led alongside the eerily quiet, heavily guarded new royal palace, which occupies a huge, walled compound in central Katmandu. Once open to tourists, it has been closed since that night in 2001 when, high on drugs and alcohol and distraught after an argument with his parents, Prince Dipendra opened fire on his family and then turned the weapon on himself. He was rushed to the hospital in a coma and proclaimed king, but he died without regaining consciousness.

The prince’s uncle, Gyanendra, then took the throne. Though he doesn’t enjoy wide popularity, many Nepalese are deeply attached to the monarchy so you still see his picture in restaurants and shops.

Life goes on, especially in crazy Thamel, which grew up when itinerant hippies discovered Nepal’s cheap hospitality and hash in the ‘60s. The country outlawed marijuana in 1973, and only a few graying flower children hang on. But the Thamel street scene remains overpowering, a slam against the wall for trekkers just emerged from the silent, white temple of the Himalayas.

Everyone seems to be buying or selling budget digs, pashminas, “Terminator” videos, Tibetan dumplings, cappuccino or statues of the Lord Buddha.

Thamel’s unofficial nerve center is Pilgrims Book House, which has a large collection of titles on the Himalayas, handicrafts and a congenial restaurant. I sat there drinking milky Nepalese tea with owner Rama Nand Tiwari, a diminutive man who has a long, grizzled yak beard and Santa Claus belly laugh. He started selling used books on the street in Varanasi, India, then moved to Katmandu about 25 years ago. “I am a book sadhu,” he told me, using the Sanskrit word for “holy man.”

The only other quiet corner in Thamel is the newly opened Garden of Dreams on the grounds of an old, European-style, Rana-era palace currently occupied by the Ministry of Sports and Education.

Dining and shopping

NEVERTHELESS, I kept going back because of the restaurants. They serve every variety of Asian cuisine, refreshingly unfused because contemporary cooking fashions haven’t yet reached Nepal. I had perfect, peanutty pad Thai in the courtyard at Yin and Yang, and sat on the floor at elegant Thamel House, tasting traditional dishes of the Newari people (who are about half the people in the Katmandu Valley) such as salty, roasted soybeans and potatoes fried with turmeric, chili and cumin.

Thamel is also an irresistible place to shop, with merchandise from all over Asia, testifying to Katmandu’s favored location on age-old trading routes between India and China. Prices for fabrics and clothes, carpets, wood carvings, Newari metalwork, handmade mulberry paper and an astonishing array of knickknacks are low even before the negotiation process starts. I amassed so many treasures that I had to get an extra suitcase at the Bluebird department store near my hotel, where I found even more souvenirs to fill it.

Upscale shoppers favor Durbar Marg, two long blocks east of Thamel. It is Katmandu’s Fifth Avenue, never mind the uneven sidewalks and stray dogs.

There I found the atelier of Nepalese couturier Yasmine Rana. For a lark, I tried on a stunning red yak wool coat with leather-trimmed lapels and, of course, had to buy it, for about $140.

At the south end of Durbar Marg, another zany intersection moves traffic past the artificial lake Rani Pokhari toward Asan Tole. The street is a Nepalese souk where locals shop for cut-rate sneakers, underwear, household items, baubles, bangles and produce delivered daily from valley farms.

The diagonal pedestrian artery leads to Katmandu’s historic center, Palace Square or Durbar Square, crowded with statues, pavilions, the maze-like old royal palace and marigold-decorated temples in a range of architectural styles. Pilgrims who come for blessings from the Shivas and Vishnus inside, souvenir hawkers, insane rickshaw drivers and restoration teams working with pickaxes atop rickety scaffolds make the area vibrantly alive.

Tourists must buy tickets to wander through the precincts and many of the monuments, such as Taleju Temple, a three-tiered pagoda built in 1564, can be inspected only from the outside. But the ornate wood carving -- a specialty of the Newari people -- in the courtyard of Kumari-ghar is open to visitors, including the stage-like balcony where a beloved little girl selected to be the living incarnation of the goddess Kumari appears at times. The Kumari presides over festivals and coronations until her first menstruation, when she is replaced by another suitable, prepubescent child.

The old palace, a series of interlocking courts and towers, stands at the east side of the square. It is soberly beautiful but somewhat dilapidated, haunted by intrigue and conspiracy, like the mass killing of 30 high officials in 1846, engineered by the first Rana prime minister. Wandering through the winding wings of the palace’s Tribhuvan Museum, I found it easy to imagine gaslight and ghosts. Among its musty treasures are touching baby pictures of King Tribhuvan, who was raised as a virtual prisoner in the palace but escaped to India in 1950, where he helped unseat the Ranas and give Nepal its first democratic government.

Before the current Shah dynasty took over, the valley was ruled by members of the Malla clan. They competed with one another to fill palace squares in Katmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan with marvels, chiefly thanks to Newari builders, metalworkers and woodcarvers whose expertise was appreciated all across Asia.

One morning I went by car, with a guide, to Bhaktapur, set among small farms and brick factories about 10 miles east of Katmandu. It was harvest time, so even in the middle of Bhaktapur piles of golden rice were drying in the sunshine. Germany helped Nepal restore Bhaktapur’s palace square and whole historic center, turning it into a living museum, especially noteworthy for its exquisitely carved windows.

Then we turned toward Patan, across the Bagmati River from Katmandu. Its Malla-era palace is now the country’s premier art museum, showcasing stunning Newari bronze, painting, photography and furniture. Scores of uniformed schoolchildren were there when I toured the museum, clustered around displays that tell the fantastical stories of Nepal’s myriad gods and goddesses: the monstrous Bairab with his headdress of skulls, Shiva and his bull Nandi, the beloved elephant god Ganesh and bloodthirsty Durga.

I thought of the supercharged Nepalese pantheon as a sort of Marvel comic book, until I visited Pashupatinath on the outskirts of Katmandu, with its riverside cremation ghats and great, incense-darkened Hindu temple.

Pilgrims come here from all over Asia to worship one of the more benign incarnations of creator-destroyer god Shiva, who is said to ride a bull and live in the Himalayas. When I asked my guide whether the Nepalese people viewed such stories as myths, he frowned and shook his head. “Our belief is literal,” he said.

Literal, perhaps, but also an integral part of people’s lives. In Nepal religion is not for holy days only, but tightly woven into routine, as I saw early one morning at Swayambhunath Temple a few miles west of downtown Katmandu. Devotees in warmup suits were taking their morning constitutionals and accruing blessings at the same time by circumambulating the hill on which the temple is perched.

A steep flight of steps leads to a giant white stupa, decorated with prayer flags and another image of Buddha’s all-seeing eyes. Monkeys skitter across the compound’s tile roofs and, when I was there, a platoon of teenage soldiers filed around the stupa, spinning the prayer wheels.

I stood and watched, counting my own blessings. To be in Nepal at that moment seemed a great gift. Only Buddha can see how the Nepalese will fare as they begin to rebuild their fragile democracy. But now I’m sure there is welcome in his eyes.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

An inviting destination once more

GETTING THERE:

From LAX to Katmandu, connecting service (change of planes) is available on Korean Airways, Thai, Cathay Pacific and Air India. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,260.

TELEPHONES:

To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 977 (country code for Nepal), 1 (the city code for Katmandu) and the local number.

WHERE TO STAY:

Dwarika’s Hotel, 447-3725, www.dwarikas.com, is an architectural landmark constructed with wood carvings salvaged from traditional temples and houses throughout the Katmandu Valley. It has 72 luxurious rooms, a beautiful courtyard, swimming pool, restaurant and bar. Doubles $135 to $210.

Hotel Tibet, 442-9085, www.hotel-tibet.com, is a friendly, 55-room, family-owned hotel off Lazimpat Road, about a 10-minute walk north of Thamel. It has a restaurant and rooftop terrace. Doubles $80, including breakfast.

Hotel Vajra, 427-1545, is a handsome compound on a hilltop outside the city center near Swayambhunath Temple. Favored by trekkers, it has a garden setting, elaborate wood carvings, restaurant, rooftop bar and theater; doubles $16-$61, including breakfast.

Kathmandu Guest House, 470-0800, www.ktmgh.com, is an old favorite among budget travelers, in a compound set back from the busy streets of the Thamel district. It has 121 rooms, a courtyard cafe with WiFi, ATM, laundry, bike rental, travel agency and hair salon. Doubles $4 to $65.

WHERE TO EAT:

Chez Caroline, 426-3070, is a stylish and agreeable restaurant serving French onion soup, quiche, omelets, etc., at the Baber Mahal Revisited shopping arcade. $10-$15.

Mike’s Breakfast, 442-4303, founded by one of the first U.S. Peace Corps volunteers to arrive in Nepal in the ‘60s, is in a courtyard shaded by a giant camphor tree in the Naxal neighborhood, east of the new palace; it offers a diverse menu, from gourmet coffee to quesadillas. $5-$10.

Yin and Yang, is an excellent Thai place in busy Thamel. $10-$15.

Thamel House, 441-0388, is in a restored 19th century Newari town house at the north end of Thamel. It serves traditional Newari cuisine at low tables with seating on the floor. $10-$15.

TO LEARN MORE:

Nepal Tourism Board, Tourist Service Center, P.O. Box 11018, Bhrikuti Mandap, Katmandu, Nepal, 425-6909, www.welcomenepal.com.

-- Susan Spano