Pokhara Old Bazaar

Who suggested that we stop at Pokhara Old Bazaar on the way back from Sarangkot? Was it the young man who seemed to look after all aspects of our hotel? Or was the inception something that we’d read in a book or blog? Neither of us remember any longer, but we are happy we strolled along the old bazaar. Unlike Kathmandu, old Pokhara does not seem to be built as a maze of squares abutting on each other. The part that we walked through was a set of streets laid out in a rough grid, all faced by the red brick facades common across the country.

There was some zoning involved. In one part of the street all the houses were fronted by rows of doors. Behind one set (see the featured photo) there was a narrow room which seemed like an outer room of a family house. It had decorations left over, seemingly from a birthday party for a child. Others had used this space for shops. We saw a general store: brooms and vegetables outside on the pavement, spices and condiements inside. Another was a store for children: colourful kites, charts and framed pictured, writing material, and even toys were what it specialized in.

But commerce seemed to be mixed in with socializing. I’d noticed one old aunty sitting outside her family shop from up the road. By the time we came by, another lady from the neighbourhood had joined her for a chat. In other shops people hung around waiting for people to drop in. Later, in a sweet shop, the owner came out to drag us in for a conversation which ended in us tasting his jalebis.

I’d been watching one itinerant priest work one side of the road. After our jalebis we sauntered down to a little neighbourhood pagoda temple. The sadhu had finished with the other side of the road and was not crossing over to the side we’d walked down. You can see from this photo that most houses have two floors above the street level, just like in Kathmandu. Was the resemblance to traditional Newa architecture accidental? Or did the Gorkha led unification of Nepal let Newa businessmen spread across the country? Our car was just ahead. It had been an interesting neighbourhood, much like some of the older areas of Kyoto, or small towns in Vietnam, in its vibe. In India living is harder, and shopkeepers now hustle more. One had to go back to movies from the 1960s to find an atmosphere like this in India. Perhaps once a lot of Asia had been like this.