Matya in Patan — 2 Days

Matya falls the day after Gai Jatra, which means the afternoon before it is not a spare one — Patan's own Sa Paru processions are moving through the same lanes, and the city is already open in the way it only is during Gunla.

Use the daylight for the part of Matya you cannot see tomorrow. The circuit is anchored on four enormous stupas at the old edges of the city, and they are far enough apart that on the day itself you will pass them in a moving crowd, at speed, most likely in the dark. Walk them now, in order around the city: Pulchowk to the west, Lagan to the south, Teta east, Ibahi north. Three are grassed earth mounds with shrines set into the base; Ibahi is the odd one — plastered, whitewashed, painted eyes on the harmika, inside a walled courtyard of white chaityas.

Between them, drop into the bahal courtyards the procession will thread through: the Golden Temple, Rudravarna Mahavihar at Okubahal, Nag Bahal, Mahabouddha. Read The Circuit and Bogiwonegu in the evening — the second explains the parties who have been walking the route after midnight since the first day of Gunla, marking it with lamps, and it is the reason tomorrow's line through the city is not improvised.

A practical note: the four thur are a genuine walk apart, roughly 3 km end to end through lanes. Give the afternoon to it rather than fitting it around something else.

The circuit starts from the host tole before dawn and does not finish until well after dark. It is a pilgrimage rather than a spectacle: walkers carry lamps, incense and grains of rice, and the point is to touch every Buddhist shrine in Patan — the bahals, the chaityas in every courtyard, and the four thur. Nobody watches Matya from a viewing spot. You either join the line or you let it pass you.

What to expect if you walk it: hours, monsoon rain, and no food stops built in. Do a section rather than the whole thing if it is your first year — the stretch through the bahal courtyards between Mangal Bazaar and Okubahal gives you the character of it in two or three hours.

The procession is not uniformly solemn. It is a memorial walk for those who died in the past year, and inside it are the comic characters in deliberately absurd get-ups whose job is to make the bereaved laugh, the Lumbini pageant of costumed gods, and Gunla Bajan played all day — the dhaa drum and cymbals that you will hear before you see anything. Those three are what make Matya legible; if you read nothing else, read them.

If you have the evening left, Kumbheshwar is a short walk north of the square and is the other pole of Patan's Gunla — worth seeing without a crowd on it.