Desmond Doig

A monument to an Indian princess

Perhaps in the darkness of the night, sorcerers still meet to change metal into stone and water into burning oil.

Jun 28, 2001

Just singing, dancing in the rain.

On one of my earliest visits to Nepal I walked across the border. I came with a Hungarian artist who lived in India, her companion a French…

Jun 7, 2001

When a goddess played dice

A desolate and repentant King Jaya Prakash Malla ordered a search for a suitable child.

May 31, 2001

The gates to the Royal Palace

Perhaps it was that threat of eventual collapse that prompted replacing the splendid old palace with a modern complex.

May 17, 2001

The light of many suns

I went to the famed Pashupati mystic Shivpuri Baba, a jovial old man with a flowing beard who claimed to be 150 years old.

May 3, 2001

Three golden kings

There are the inevitable tales that have kings so delighted by the work they commissioned they had the artist either killed or maimed to avoid their masterpiece being surpasse

Mar 22, 2001

The golden mask of the White Bhairab

One of the most dramatic sights in Kathmandu, heightened by the fact that it is revealed only once a year and then only for a few days is the…

Mar 1, 2001

Holiest of the holies

Pashupatinath both fascinates and frightens me. Here is beauty commissioned by art's greatest patron. But here too are Kathmandu's few real…

Feb 22, 2001

A victim of the Mahabharatta

Krishna fearing that Yalambar would join the Kauravas, decapitated the king with a blow so powerful that his masked head flew across the lower ranges of the Himalaya to come to rest in Kathmandu.

Feb 15, 2001

A courtyard to the Buddha’s memory

No record of Buddha's visit to the Valley exists other than hearsay attached to hallowed spots. Like a small courtyard in Patan.

Feb 8, 2001

The water gardens of Balaju

The new pools are stagnant, their fountains refuse to play. The flowerbeds try valiantly to battle the press of people.

Feb 1, 2001

A decapitated God and an

Instead of being pleased by all this royal extravagance, the god grew angry at being disturbed.

Jan 25, 2001

A monument to an angry god

When one sits and dreams in the shadow of the Nyatapola temple a coffee or Coke can be the slowest drink on earth.

Jan 18, 2001

No other crown could be so fantastically devised, so priceless. It is a glitter of closely set diamonds and pearls, hung with drop rubies and emeralds the size of plums and atop it, clasped by more diamonds, is a cascade of bird-of-paradise plumes.

Jan 4, 2001