Sunil Manandhar
Nuwakot Durbar was the palace of Prithvi Narayan Shah, and his ancestors, before he annexed Kathmandu valley. The thought of visiting this place itself brings back the memories of the glorious past of Gurkha warriors who united Nepal. On the foggy morning of 15th September, 2012, we set out to visit this historical site along Kathmandu-Kakani Highway. However, fate had planned a different destination for us. As we were passing along the highway thinking and imagining the difficult hike through Battar to the Durbar, we were suddenly stuck at a place called “Okharpauwa”, at around 9.30am. Our van couldn’t move forwards owing to the muddy and slippery ascended way. Kedar Dai tried several times but failed to make it up the slope. We had no option but to change our destination. After consulting with a few locals, we planned to hike from “Okharpauwa” to “Tarkeshwor Mandir” and then to “Thulokhola”. We had breakfast at Okharpauwa and then everyone were ready to walk, however we knew nothing about how tough the hike would be. No one knew about the location or the way. As we ascended higher up the hill the fog started to get more prominent making the weather really cool and moderate. The scenery around the vicinity was breath-taking and we frequently stopped by for some photo shoots. A serendipitous moment was when we reached the top of the hill and saw the view of Kathmandu Valley. It was like a cup with a bunch of fog floating by in the middle. It felt as if some fog had cleared up and wanted to show us the magnificence of the valley. We spent almost half an hour there enjoying the greenery of the adjoining hills and valleys. Following unmaintained trails, we reached a place called “Padheli” where we found an 8 year old boy named Amrit Tamang who was gathering firewood. We would have been lost without him. He guided us through the thick bushy forest, which attacked us with her spiderwebs, leeches and wild bees. We finally reached the place called “Andherikhola”, where we found a majestic and powerful fountain. We had to make a decision to go either across the fountain or all the way back. Dambar and Subash bravely crossed the fountain and also helped everyone else across. We all played in the water and spent some time for photo shoot. Further up we reached the trail leading to “Tarkeshwor Mahadev” temple. Although, the way to the temple was fairly straight forward from there, we decided to head back home. To say that the forest had beaten us up, and that we had barely an ounce of energy or patience left, would be a lie. We were actually really hungry and were dying to go find some warm, clean Thakali restaurant, away from this wild place.
