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purwanews
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Saturday, August 27, 2011
Kathmandu: The greatest place on earth to get lost
Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.
“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux
Kathmandu has to be one of the greatest places on earth to get lost. The old city is an architectural and cultural labyrinth. Surrounded by steep hills, the narrow streets of the city are crammed full of people, temples, sounds, smells, sellers, buyers, trash and your occasional cow or monkey. The place is buzzing with life.
For the nomadically curious, this makes Kathmandu a gold mine.
Navigating these streets is a bit challenging. Between the trash, cars, bikes, rickshaws, markets and people — there is very little room to even walk. However, wondering through the streets is a wonderful sensory overload of the ancient and thenew. The city was founded in the 12th century, during the Malla dynasty. Most of Kathmandu’s temples were built during this period as well.
One unique thing about Kathmandu, is the seamless integration of religious areas and temples within the city. I think you could be anywhere in the old city and throw a rock, and most likely hit a temple. Some of these temples have people praying at them, others have been taken over by the growing urban environment. In some cases, the city is dense enough that people have built their homes inside of temples.
Sadly, most of these temples have also become the place to put your trash. Almost every temple has an enormous pile of trash next to it which everyone seems to either ignore, or not care about (more on this next week).
Some of these temples look similar to other Buddhist and Hindu temples throughout Tibet and South Asia. However, theUNESCO World Heritage Area Durbar Square is pretty wild looking. The two shots above here, as well as the shot below show Durbar Square at night, day and sunset.
This is where former kings ruled Nepal from. Today, it is filled with locals loitering, sleeping and trying to figure out how to get money from foreigners. Its also where I met this colorful guy. Its a really bizarre kind of architecture that reminds me of a cross between Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the White House and the Mayan pyramids.
Kathmandu also has some of the most pornographic temples I’ve ever seen. Images on the sides of the temples depict some pretty hardcore scenes. This makes walking through the streets very entertaining and is a good way to bring out the immature teenager in you.
To get a better view of some of these scenes, click on the above photo to embiggin’ it.
Although the population of Kathmandu is only 1 million, the fight for space is evident (its also possible my judgement of population vs space has been highly altered from living in China). The above photo shows a larger street, in the next two upcoming posts documenting Kathmandu, you’ll see some of the tighter spaces.
Photographically speaking the city is amazing with an endless possibilities of cityscapes, landscapes and people oriented photographs. Hindi and Buddhist clothing is some of the most colorful in the world. The density of the buildings with the mountains backdropping the city would make the city easy to photograph even without looking.
While I really love the city, its certainly not all cake and cookies. Poverty levels are extremely high and in general, the place is pretty gross. Next post, we’ll explore photographically a little more of the grit of Kathmandu, followed by a post highlighting some of the colorful people of the city.
Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash
Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.
“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux
Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash. While in the last post I detailed some of the highlights of Nepal’s epicenter this post focuses on the not-so-nice side of the city. And there is plenty of it. In fact, it is really pretty gross.
Trash liters the streets in large piles almost everywhere you go. Worse than that, the place the trash is usually piled is on or next to are ancient temples. Visually and aromatically — this is pretty gross and is certainly one of the dirtier places I’ve ever seen. For those that have traveled in India, I’m sure there are similar sites. I’ve seen trashed beaches in Southeast Asia and witnessed how the North African population deals with their trash (they don’t) — but this was a big step in the wrong direction from those experiences.
In a city so congested like Kathmandu — the trash piles really become integrated into peoples lives.
On any given street corner you might see a vendor selling spices or vegetables off the ground. Five feet away a mound of trash grows. Animals are drawn to the garbage adding one more factor into the already gross equation. Beggers and homeless people sleep on the ground while shoeless children run through the garbage playing.
I was also there during the rainy season which seems to create a filthy-slimy-film like cover to the ground in the ancient city. At points it was like walking around in a greasy kitchen. The shine on the ground on the photo directly above, shows this a little bit. When the water comes it seems to just spread the grease of the trash evenly around the roads.
Beyond the obvious lack of infrastructure to collect the trash, people’s respect toward their environment seemed equally disturbing. In the above example, a boy pee’s on a temple that was constructed in the 12th century. Even in the UNESCO World Heritage Area Durbar Square, people seemed to completely ignore the fact they were in a historic place. Locals sit in the temples, with seemingly nothing to do smoking and throwing an enormous amount of cigarettes and trash whenver they happened to be.
I should point out, I am by no means an expert on Nepalese social structure or government infrastructure. These are just consequential observations I had when I was there. its possible, all of these people were just on their day off …
I’ve had a big focus this year in trying to do more NGO related photography. My NGO related photography this year has focused on the environment, poverty and cultural preservation. While trash and the environment are directly related I would like to focus on this more. If any ‘trash’ related NGO reads this send me an email and I would love to get involved helping to create some media to show people the extent of this problem.
I think the temples get the worst of it because they are public space. If you don’t want your trash on your property, and no one will pick it up — I can understand the logic of putting at the temple. This way, your not dumping it on your neighbor’s property and if its no one’s property, no one can really yell at you for doing it. However, after a quick Google search one can see, this is not a new problem and it doesn’t there doesn’t seem to be a solution lined up.
Some general facts about the economic state of Nepal from the CIA World Fact Book:
Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with almost one-quarter of its population living below the poverty line. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for three-fourths of the population and accounting for about one-third of GDP. Industrial activity mainly involves the processing of agricultural products, including pulses, jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain. During the global recession of 2009, remittances from foreign workers abroad increased 47% to $2.8 billion while tourist arrivals only decreased 1% compared to the previous year. Nepal has considerable scope for exploiting its potential in hydropower, with an estimated 42,000 MW of feasible capacity, but political instability hampers foreign investment. Additional challenges to Nepal’s growth include its technological backwardness, landlocked geographic location, civil strife and labor unrest, and its susceptibility to natural disaster.
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