Nyatapaul

It's becoming something of a standing joke that wherever I travel, the most important piece of local architecture is invariably clad in scaffolding when I arrive. On this occasion I didn't mind too much since Nepalese scaffolding is an impressive sight in its own right. Rather than using steel, scaffolding is always made of bamboo poles lashed together with hemp. As well as being much cheaper than metal, the natural resilience of bamboo means that it can easily withstand earthquakes which would flatten a stiffer structure. Anyway, just for the record, the Nyatapola is the biggest temple in the valley (30m high) and is in my humble opinion the absolute high-point of Nepalese architecture. Built in 1702 by the great King Bhupatindra Malla, it was so well designed and built that it emerged almost unscathed from the 1934 earthquake that trashed so many of the valley's buildings. The temple is dedicated to Siddhi Lakshmi, an obscure tantric goddess (doubly obscure in this case since only the priests are allowed to see her image inside the temple.)