Visiting in Durbar Square

After Swayambhunath and more shopping, on Sunday evening we walked to Kathmandu’s Durbar Square where the older royal palace is, which is now a museum like Paten’s, and many temples like those in Paten only taller and bigger. We stopped at the home of the Kumari, who is a living virgin goddess, a girl who grows up in this temple until she reaches puberty and is sent out to live an ordinary life and is replaced by another Kumari. She appeared in the upstairs lattice window to wave at us.

We went on from there a short distance to Dilli Mama’s brother’s home, where the whole family grew up, because the tailor is there who will sew my curta. We entered a courtyard through a door, then a key on a little parachute was thrown down for us to unlock the tiny double doors into their home. Inside we went up three flights that were as much ladders as stairs, then some more steps, and were greeted by a fluffy white dog and its family. We ate snacks and drank juice (food is always involved), went downstairs for me to be measured, went up to the roof where Dilli Mama’s brother keeps dozens of beautiful pigeons. This has been a family business for three generations. They rent them to parties, where they are released and fly home. He let them out of their big cage (filled with pigeonholes, of course) to feed and fly around, and then they went back inside. They raise their young in there—he handed me two babies, one two days old whose eyes were not open, the other two weeks old that was still lacking most of its feathers.

Then we had supper of chicken, jackfruit (?), various beans, rice of course, and mangos. Lots of people are vegetarian here or don’t eat certain meats because of religious commitments, so they are not surprised when I say I don’t eat meat. By the time we left it was about 9:00. We strolled slowly back to the sari shop, where Erika and her father shuttled us back home on their motorcycles through the streets of Kathmandu.