Hanging out in Patan’s Darbar Square

After strolling around the Darbar square once we thought it might be nice to have a coffee and something sweet. That’s when we realized that Patan is not really on a tourist map. The doors of Joshi’s Cafe were open to customers. It would have been a nice hangout if we were forty years younger. The only places to sit were little stools which would play havoc with the knees.

This was at one edge of the square. We walked further along that road and came to a little square, a bahal in Kathmandu’s local patois, which was full of roadside eateries. Sadly the only seating was the same kind of low stools. Since our twenties these were not places we would choose for a relaxed half an hour in the evening.

We walked back and cut across the square as nearly diagonally as we could, given the temples and the construction areas. I stopped to take a photo of this bicycle left leaning against the plinth of a temple. I love unattended bicycles, especially those which are not locked down with hardened molybdenum steel chains. There is a sense of the culture, its gentleness, to the sight of an unlocked and unattended bicycle.

The other end of the square had heavy traffic in the usual Kathmandu sense: a lot of two wheelers zipping about, and a few cars. A street leading off resembled Kathmandu’s freak street, with its cheap tourist cafes. Orthogonal to it, in the geometric and cultural senses, we found an interesting local restaurant up one steep flight of stairs. Carved wooden balconies overhung the street and held tables with a view out over Darbar square. Several tables were taken by Nepali families at dinner. There was no coffee, but we could have the tea, and juju dhau.