After days of shopping and meeting with our thangka painters, incense makers and artisans of all kinds we head to Bhaktapur and Nagarkot for a couple of days of sightseeing and relaxation. Bhaktapur is one of the oldest cities in the region, every building is hundreds of years old. The streets are just wide enough for 2 people to walk side by side and traditional life goes on here as it did centuries ago. Tourists usually pay for a pass to enter the city but as we are visiting friends in their homes we just walk around the city watching craftspeople carve wooden statues and wall hangings, thangka painters sitting in the middle of their shops working on a new piece of traditional Tibetan art. Each city in the Kathmandu valley has a durbar square, we spend hours wandering through the 3 main squares and talking with locals and tourists enchanted with the city. In the next post we head up to 9000 feet to Nagarkot where we catch a glimpse of the Himalayas.
