The Road to the Mangal Bazar

The Road to Patan Durbar Square

A cluster of vans, micro and travel buses park within centimeters of each other, kicking up dust and pollution their customers choke on. Squeaking brakes hum and make a sudden stop as the engine is killed. Customers spill out of the busy buses in a whirled and dazed motion, slipping the ten-year-old bus boy fifteen rupees. All the people avert their direction down the Lagankhel Road leading to Patan’s Durbar Square, famous for the Buddhist temple. Though it’s 2017, it seems more like an ancient street transporting people back hundreds of years. 

While the temple is the prize -  both for local Nepali people and for the few Caucasian tourists that stick out like mud on a white shirt - the street leading up to it is a trek and a journey in itself.

Taking a step down the skinny road is like stepping into a valley of arching boulders. Buildings of wood and brick tower over the society even though they sit only two or three stories high. Long shadows are cast from them, but heat still sears, forcing people to strip off scarves and fan their sweating faces.

Each building is a masterpiece. Intricate designs of gods and deities are carved into the dark wood bordering the shop entrances, which look like mirrors of each other.

The owners are men with Dhaka topis covering their balding heads and wrinkles engraved into their faces sitting on mudas – colorful handwoven stools small enough for a hobbit. They stare straight in a lost daydream, hardly noticing the crowds shouting, barking with laughter, and squishing past their stores to get to the square.

Behind them in their cramped shop sits hundreds of fabrics for kurtas and chupas, some with muted colors, others with flashy bright purples and pinks. Yet not a one is plain. Each have embroidered flowers, exotic birds, and wild designs, making the cloth look more like a costume rather than a daily outfit.

Women and girls enter shops, rubbing the fancy fabrics between their thumb and index fingers. They slip their rubber sandals off and step onto a large cushion to point at the specific fabric they want, then ooh, ah, and giggle to each other.

Shop owners jump to life. Worries no longer look like they’re weighing them down. Instead they have a mission. They coax customers to buy fabric, which they assure is of the highest quality or imported from the mystic country of India. For foreigners, they spike the price, sometimes three times what it would be for Nepali people. But compared to developed countries, the price of 500 rupees for three meters of fabric - or five dollars - is still dirt cheap.

Back on the road, motorbikes, bicycles, and large vehicles make their impossible way down the road, barely squeaking past each other and pedestrians. The sea of people does not split for the motorized vehicles unless their horn blares. People touch their ear with gentle fingers and suppress irritated looks, stepping closer to the side of the street, allowing the motorbike or taxi to whoosh by in a dramatic manner. On occasion, however, unsuspecting victims are bumped by the vehicles or traffic jams stir up strife from both walkers and drivers. The road clogs up and yet continues its busy movement, with voices, cackles, and loud musical honks blasting directly into people’s ears, threatening early age deafness.

Most visitors hold scarves over their mouth and nose or string a black mouth mask to protect their lungs from possible respiratory infection. Dirt, dust, and flies stir from mud-caked wheels and feet of the thousands on the single street. They stick to everything: the air, the clothes, the people, and the plastic wrapped around red fruit at rollaway stands.

The rollaway cart owners are men with sun stained skin. They stare at passerby’s whispering offers of sweet and fresh fruit for a good price. An occasional woman in a colorful kurta and a determined frown on her chubby face marches up to the stand and bargains the man down to the lowest price possible. An exchange of money won’t look friendly to an onlooker as neither smiles or thanks the other. The woman parts with a melon stuffed into a canvas bag and tugging away her child pointing at an ice cream stand. The cart owner stares, shuffling through the wad of rupee bills he’s received so far that day.

The people will take little notice of those around them, including the hounds on nearly every shop step. They daintily step over or around stray dogs that are passed out, panting in the unbearable heat. The dogs litter the slim sidewalks and road. The other bony canines, swerve in and out through the crowd in search of fallen crumbs from stands. All have bald patches and look unfed, but still have smiles smeared across their mouth and the glistening hopeful eyes like that of a child.

  

But dogs aren’t the only animals on the Mangal Bazar road. If it didn’t seem like a zoo already, cows sit lazily off to the side, whipping their tails to rid themselves of the hustling flies. Crying black crows land on their back or head, helping to peck off the pesky flies. People ignore the beasts as here, it is normal to see cows on the city road.

Half way between the start of the road and Durbar Square is a small sort of preview temple, guarded by two stone lions, glaring down any who might step out of line. A small doorway sits behind them and a small peak inside shows a rectangular grounds area, with green bush patches giving some color to the worn brown wood.

 

Individuals stop to take a step inside, but the majority of the crowd rushes to the end of the road, which intersects with another and then crosses over to the square of temples. Each looks like an ancient structure built during the Chinese dynasty. The majority of the buildings have an array of rooves. Several parts jut up with three squares stacked on top of each other and are completed with a royal gold point. The temple that stands out the most is round and has columns after columns supporting it like it was a Roman structure instead of an Asian one.

People weave in and out, snap photographs, take naps on the steps, and sit reflecting on where they are and what it means to them.