Katmandu, city of souvenirs

I already said what I though of Katmandu city in my previous blog about the Annapurna Circuit trek (to read click here), where I praised it history and it's people. In this article I don't want to imply that Katmandu is just a city that sells souvenirs, but the fact is that, in addition to all the other amazing things that Katmandu city has to offer, it's also the best place in Nepal for shopping and to get a bunch of interesting souvenirs and tibetan relics or antiques.


All over the country you can find amazing things like Tibetan tankas, fossils, buddhist engraving on wood, stone and bone, Tibetan singing bowls, Tibetan liturgic or ritualistic objects and utensils, Tibetan and Nepalese knives, handmade carpets and clothes, Tibetan masks, books, rosaries, liturgic musical instruments, teek wood woodwork, etc. All of this both ancient and new. Pokhara especially has all this together as well as Katmandu. But by far the cheapest and most convenient place to buy all this stuff is Katmandu. Most of the things from Pokhara and even from the touristic villages in the Himalayas (I've been told that even as far as Muktinath and Marpha) come from Katmandu, except for the hand-made clothes and some other stuff.

After doing my rounds of trekks and visits to both holy and touristic cities, I stayed again two more days in the capital and bought tons of things for my friends and relatives. Perhaps the most interesting of the souvenirs available are the Tibetan tankas (Tibetan paintings that are put on a silk canvas and hung on walls. Anywhere around the city you will find many houses that sell these. You always nee to negotiate. Mainly there are two types of quality (at least) amongst the more serious Thangka shops: the cheaper ones that cost around USD 50 for a medium size one, and what they call the master quality ones, that cost from three time more on, for the same size. You can get better deals sometimes at other lower end street shops, and you can even buy some really old ones, which are regarded as antiques. However, the more serious and professional shops will guarantee that they use high-end materials and colors that last much longer, and for the golden colors they ideally would use pure gold, that shouldn't become black with time.

Katmandu, after Daramsala in India (where the Dalai Lama resides) has the biggest number of Tibetan refugees, and therefore the Tibetan culture and arts are everywhere. Some lower-end shops, however, would sell tankas saying that they are painted by monks, although I heard say that this is a lye to sell more, because the monks only paint for the monasteries; not to sell. But now I'm not really sure about that. At the shops in Durbar square you can find many good deals in all sizes of Tangas, big and small.

As for the Tibetan bowls I've bought some old ones about 90 years old (Tibetan), and other newer ones, Nepali and Tibetan. I heard that the Nepali ones are better in quality, and they don't get tarnished after some years (the old Tibetan singing bowl I had bought was quite severely tarnished, and I still need find a way to clean it well). However, the sound of the Tibetan ones I got is better than the Nepalese ones.

In Marpha I got interested in an ancient knife for slaughtering cattle. It's in very poor shape due to use, rust and age. It even had the sheeth. I paid for it USD 10, which is quite a lot of money for that kind of utensil in the mountains. But I didn't care I was paying expensive, and was happy with that souvenir to give to a friend. It's the kind of knife the Tibetans traditionally use for cutting the neck of the goats and sheep.

Even books in Nepal are very cheap and good. Everywhere you will find a great collection of travel guides, books about expeditions and treks, about spirituality, religion, meditation, Tibetan culture, history, plus the more common stuff you can buy anywhere. I compared the price of several books I bought with Amazon, and they were much cheaper. Still, not as cheap as India, I think. But here the books are more focussed on the topic of exploration, spirituality, adventures and biographies.

Personally, I don't care about souvenirs; but I found the range of offers in Nepal very much appealing. But although the prices are cheap, as a rule you need to be tough and negotiate a lot to pay the real price, and not just what seems cheap to us westerners. Some tourist brochures published by the Nepalese government ask tourists to pay just what is fair, because otherwise in time things get ridiculously expensive for everybody, even the locals. Sometimes I even found it hard to comply to this request, because I felt a bit nasty to argue with a shopkeeper for what for me was small money.