The Garden of Dreams

Kathmandu is mad. It’s colours, chaos and cars driving on the wrong side of the road. It’s dirt-faced children tugging on your arms whilst glamorous Nepali women in beaded saris and dotted bindis walk by. It’s fruit peddlers on bicycles laden with wicker baskets of fresh mangoes and pomegranates, and its narrow, dusty streets cocooned by a disarray of stalls selling pashmeenas, trekking gear and topaz jewellery; which you haggle over with an excitable Nepali shopkeeper – who incidentally has a wife and seven kids at home to feed, you know.

The madness has an unbridled romance about it that sucks you right into the culture and vibe, as the many dreadlocked, hemp-wearing Euro hippies who never-quite-made-it-home would testify, man. And if, like me, you base your travels around your next meal, then Nepal is destination gastronome; where you can taste-tour your day through kari houses serving saffron-smoked chicken and blistered naan, wade through the throng of street-food vendors in quest of steaming Tibetan momos; or dine by candlelight atop a network of rooftop restaurants, whilst watching the Himalayan sunset cast auburn and gold over Kathmandu.

It’s a hot, sticky day typical of monsoon season, and I’m thrashing my way through the markets of the tourist epicenter, Thamel, when I happen upon a small archway with a sign that mysteriously reads: ‘The Garden of Dreams’. A nominal entrance fee later reveals to me a tranquil oasis, otherwise known as the private garden established by the late Field Marshal Kaiser Shumsher Rana in the early 1900s. Beset in this quiescent hideaway of lotus ponds, sculptured elephants and pergolas amassed with wild jasmine; the Edwardian-inspired manor and garden encompasses a library, open-air amphitheatre and café, built in later times, but in consonance with the old-world charm and majesty of a rich colonial past.

My first move is to retreat to the tea salon for an espresso of Himalayan Arabica beans, grown and harvested organically at one of the highest elevations in the world, on plantations nestled in the valleys of the surrounding Annapurna mountain range. Perhaps the sensory effect of knowing its origin adds that little extra something to the coffee, but I unhesitatingly order another to accompany my stack of unwritten postcards. Before I know it, dusk has inched its way across the garden and the lotuses begin to close and retire for the evening, indicating it’s time to wander back out into the real world.

As I re-enter the marketplace, I spot a scrawled note on the side of a building: NEPAL - Never Ending Peace And Love. This enchanting little nook where I frittered away a lazy afternoon is the embodiment of that saying for me - a place where I was momentarily lost in paradise, never wanting it to end. So take heed travellers; for somewhere in the Kingdom of Nepal, the Garden of Dreams awaits those with enough adventure and gusto to brave the thrill of Kathmandu, and just enough savoir faire to sloth around properly once there.