Boudhanath, 07:00
Before the shops open, the people who live around the great stupa walk the kora: monks in maroon, grandmothers counting beads, men on their way to work. This is the hour to fall in beside them.
Photo: Meghraj Neupane
The circuit
Keep the stupa on your right and let one hand run along the prayer wheels set into its base. Somebody may be measuring the whole circuit in prostrations. Nobody stares, and neither should you.
Photo: Sushanta Rokka / Unsplash
Sound and smell
Butter lamps burn in the shrine rooms. The pigeons lift off the dome in one sheet and settle again, and the tea shops around the ring fill with Tibetan bread. Find a rooftop for ten minutes and watch the circuit turn.
Photo: Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz / Pexels
Since 1959
Tibetan families settled around the stupa after 1959, and more than 50 gompas now ring the square. Ask your guide which monastery belongs to which school, and how the families in your lane came to be here.
Photo: Roman Saienko / Pexels
Mid-morning
By the middle of the morning the tour groups arrive and Boudha becomes a monument again. The early hour is not about light for photographs. It is about walking the circuit as part of somebody else's day.
Photo: Sanjeev Shakya / Unsplash
Planning
A room a few minutes from the stupa turns 07:00 into an easy stroll. Boudha and Pashupatinath sit close together on the city's east side, so the two share a day well: the kora in the morning, the river lamps at dusk.
Photo: loki TGM / Pexels