Bhaktapur, where I seriously wanted to pause the moment

Aditi Silwal
Class-9, Bijeshwori GyanMandir Sainik Mahavidyalaya

My feet are paining and now I am perceptive at a moment and clueless the next. Actually, the reason for my confusion is a ‘family visit to Bhaktapur Durbar Square.’

Bhaktapur being the smallest district of Nepal, it holds lots of exciting and interesting memories and moments. To tell the truth, I have visited Bhaktapur district many times but it was my second time in Bhaktapur Durbar Square, the world heritage site.  

In actual fact, I couldn’t learn much more things about Bhaktapur Durbar Square on my first visit due to the heavy rain.  Even though I don’t remember everything, let me share a little about my first visit to Durbar Square. Genuinely speaking, that visit was like a fast rewinding of a movie. We went there in my father’s scooter with my cousin; Sarthak after 4 pm, enjoying ourselves a lot.

As Bhaktapur is notable for its pottery work and art, we even went to the pottery shop of pottery square and tried to make whatever we can. But frankly speaking, we were not successful even to make one thing. After we came outside from the shop, the rain started which was massively heavy. We had a raincoat but it was unsuccessful to save us from the massive rain. At first, I enjoyed the rain as it was my hobby to be wet in rain but afterward, I started feeling cold. As a result, all of us suffered from a common cold.

Now let’s talk about my second visit, which is completely different from the first one. At first, we went to the Dattatreya Temple which honors the composite deity Dattatreya, a personification of the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. There was a practice of eating ‘Dahi and Chiura’ (Curd and beaten rice) as a prasad (blessing) in the temple. After that, we headed towards Nyatapole temple. On the way, I was very surprised, excited and happy to see the historical things, antique shops and many more.

Every step I walked, I saw different new things, I seriously wanted to pause the moment but I even wanted to see many other colors of the area, feel the many other smells of the area, but I was even accepting the fact that I can’t do anything to the pause moment, so enjoying or even let’s say living the moment I reached to the tallest temple of Nepal ‘Nyatapole temple’. After reaching there I realized that this place attracts people of all ages as my brother who is only 31 months was feeling so secure. Not only my brother, but even the old aged people also seemed to be happy and secured around the premises.

I was really feeling surprised, shocked, and proud at the same time because of those beautiful stone cravings, craved on the stairs of the temple. After some photos of that beautiful historical site, we went to the museum from where we gained a lot of knowledge. So here’s the interesting part, actually after seriously a lot of recreation we were hungry, and we ate the modern food pizza and momo (dumpling) sitting inside the ancient place. Actually, in my point of view, we should have focused on traditional food rather than modern ones. After that, we make it around Napukha pond nearby Siddhipokhari and returned home. While returning home I even got to know that Ghantaghar of Kathmandu was inside the Trichandra college premises.

Even in this visit, there was a chance of raining but thankfully there was no rain. I enjoyed it a lot and now I really don’t want to miss any single visit to Unique Bhaktapur.