Pharping

Pharping is a town one hour’s ride from Kathmandu by local bus from Ratna Park bus station. I get a seat on the third bus to Pharping that leaves the bus station – the first two are full to overflowing; apparently there is a special festival today. Roads twist and turn as I near my destination passing through villages and small towns. Here and there children run in the dusty streets, shop keepers pass the time of day, and mothers do their washing from an outside tap or in a stream that passes along side the street. It’s quiet here away from the city. I climb the steps behind a monastery to a skyfull of colourful Buddhist prayer flags that are blowing in the wind; the Tibetan writing on them is carried away into the ether. Below the hill I look down onto Pharping and across to another monastery beyond the town. It’s golden-roofed Gompa (Temple) stands proud above the white-walled buildings there. This is Neydo Tashi Choeling monastery, and the nunnery lies just beyond.

The town here is growing, just like its nearby big brother Kathmandu, and buildings are going up everywhere between other homes. Patches of ground are dry and brown at this time of year and slowly disappearing beneath the ongoing construction works.

I spend a lazy afternoon here in these parts under the warm sun, surrounded by higher tree covered hills that are mere outlines in a haze that is either smog, heat mist, or a mixture of the two. I doze on the hill side underneath prayer flags, and take lunch with a Tibetan friend and the abbot of the Nyedo Tashi Choeling monastery. All too soon it is time to take the bus home to Kathmandu.