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Joe Steinbring

Bhaktapur

A wet street of shops hung with Nepali flags, below an old building with carved wooden windows.
A street of shops in Bhaktapur, selling juju dhau, the city’s sweet curd.2022 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring
Static offline map showing Bhaktapur in Nepal with a location pin.

Bhaktapur, on the eastern side of the Kathmandu Valley, was the capital of one of the valley’s three Malla kingdoms, and its old center is still a city of brick squares, tiered temples, and carved wooden windows. I spent the afternoon of September 17, 2022, there, between a morning at Boudhanath and Pashupatinath in Kathmandu and the evening at Nagarkot. It rained on and off. I came in past shops selling juju dhau, the city’s sweet curd, to Durbar Square, where King Bhupatindra Malla sits on his column before the Palace of Fifty-Five Windows, and the Fasidega temple, destroyed in the 2015 earthquake, stands again on its stepped plinth. My last stop was the Peacock Window, carved in the fifteenth century, just off Dattatreya Square.

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  • A wet brick square of temples and palaces, with a statue of a king on a stone column at right.

    Durbar Square, where King Bhupatindra Malla faces his Palace of Fifty-Five Windows.

    2022 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

  • A tall reddish temple spire on a stepped brick plinth, stone elephants and lions on its stairs.

    The Fasidega temple to Shiva, standing again after the 2015 earthquake.

    2022 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

  • A carved wooden window with a peacock fanning its tail, in a brick wall above a signed doorway.

    The Peacock Window, carved in the early fifteenth century.

    2022 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

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