Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple)

Today we woke a little later, had a lazy breakfast and then wandered into town to start making enquiries about doing a short trek as we have a few days before our appointment back at the Indian Embassy and don't want to spend them all in the City.

After lunch we walked about 45 mins to the Monkey Temple. It is an ancient religious complex up loads of steps on top of a hill in the Kathmandu Valley, west of the City. There are holy monkeys living at the Temple. It is a UNESCO world heritage site (one of 10 in Nepal) and was pretty amazing. There was some sort of ceremony going on at the bottom with music and singing. Then we climbed up many steps to see the temple itself which was really interesting and the views from the top were stunning.

Haiku
Ritual chants guide ascent
To temple heaven
Monkey guardians on the steps