Visiting Nepal's Ancient Capital City - Bhaktapur Vlog 🇳🇵

So at the heart of Nepal is this ancient city, where if you go to the center it feels like you walked into a medieval town in the Himalayas. And this is in Kathmandu. Today we're going to explore Paktapur, the old capital of Nepal. So we're staying in a mini resort which is at Nagarkot, which is at like 2200 meters elevation. On the side of the street we saw this little kid plucking these things called Himalayan berries, which you can apparently just pick off the bushes and eat directly. People asking for advice. We're going to Paktapur, which is 10 kilometers away, downhill. It's getting really hot and we had to take a bit of a detour to go get some umbrellas, but now we're back on track. At the main entrance of Paktapur, and you can see all these Nepalese flags. We just got tickets, which is like 500 for Bangladeshi citizens, but 1500 for usually Westerners. So we are in Darbar Square in Paktapur, and Darbar Square essentially means the center of a city where the king's palace is, and Paktapur is actually called one of the royal cities of Kathmandu, and to tell you the history of that I have to go a little further back. So, Paktapur, Kathmandu, Karnataka are some of the biggest cities in Nepal, and they're all in this huge valley called Kathmandu Valley, which is at an elevation of 1400 meters and is way below the surrounding mountains, although that's still pretty high for most of us living in other countries. And it was within this Kathmandu Valley that a lot of the early civilizations that developed in the borders of Nepal today first started. So in the 12th century, this king called Ananda Deva Malla founded the city of Paktapur, and he was from a family or dynasty of kings called the Malla dynasty, that essentially ruled Nepal from the 12th till the 18th century. And in the first 300 years, from the 12th to the 15th century, the capital of the Nepalese kingdom inside Kathmandu Valley was actually in Paktapur, so this city was the capital city of this entire region. Then in the 15th century, the kingdom sort of split up, and it split up into different kingdoms inside the Kathmandu Valley. So there was a kingdom of Kathmandu that had its own Darbar Square, which you should know if you've seen the last video. And right next to it, there was also a kingdom of Patan, with its own Darbar Square. There's a lot more people taking pictures here than you'd usually see because it's a Saturday and it's the weekend. Everyone has their day off and wants to come somewhere scenic, I guess. I see a lot of locals around here too. So this palace right next to Darbar Square is called the 55-window palace. So you're going to notice there's a beautiful building or temple in every corner of this Darbar Square. But you'll also notice that a lot of buildings are broken down and damaged, and this is because the 2016 earthquake that happened here that devastated a lot of the infrastructure and also killed a lot of people. So this is the Siddhi Lakshmi Temple, which is one of the main temples of Darbar Square. You're going to have a very hard time finding this place, or the stairs, without someone posing on it like my dad's doing right now. So the statues are supposed to be symbols of people guarding the temple, I guess. And apparently with every level, the guardian gets like 10 times stronger. There's like a phoenix and a horse and a human being, and a dog at the end. Walking over to the next square through this alley. There seems to be some sort of function happening in this square, so I'll have to speak a lot louder. So right now I'm on top of the Nayatapola Temple, which is a 5-storied pagoda, which is not only the tallest temple in Bhaktapur, but also the tallest temple in all of Nepal. Even when I was climbing the steps here, I saw a lot of the same symbology in the guardians of the temple, where like each level of the steps, the guardians get like 10 times stronger supposedly. Not gonna lie, these steps feel a little bit sketchy, not for people who are afraid of heights. Feels like a storm's coming again. Now is probably a good time to get some momo. It is raining so hard right now, but I have to move because I want to film some more stuff before this video actually ends, and there's like limited daylight lift. The city actually flourished because it was on the trading route to Tibet. There's actually a lot of people still living inside the city right now, which is why it's often called an open museum. The city was like quite remote, relatively, compared to the other cities in the Kathmandu Valley like Kathmandu and Patan, which is why this has its own unique culture that you can notice when you're walking around the streets. So when you go a little far away from the main squares, the touristy squares, you start to see the places where people live, and you apparently also start to see some goats. So Bhaktapur is famous all across Nepal for its pottery. There's actually this place called Pottery Square where they make all their pottery. Obviously they're not doing it outside right now because it's raining and making stuff with clay in the rain doesn't really make sense, but I did find this lady behind me who's painting some pottery in the shade. Thankfully my dad is my assistant for the day, so he's holding like two umbrellas whenever I need them to. So we came back to Darbar Square to film the intro, but we're kind of stuck in the rain now. Some coffee would be nice. So I ended up getting a mocha, sort of a coffee, because it sounded delicious, and now this is freaking delicious. But I'm going to end the vlog here for the day. I would have liked to show more stuff and see more stuff, but it looks like the weather is not going to allow me to do that today. This is it. If you liked the video, don't forget to like it. If you want to see more videos like this, feel free to subscribe to my channel and follow my page. And if you want real-time travel updates, feel free to follow me on Instagram at mandironthego. I'll catch you guys in the next video from probably somewhere else in Kathmandu.