Festival event - Patan Museum

Last night (Thursday) we did a set at one of the concert events of the festival. It was held at the Patan Museum, in Durbar Square, in Patan. Patan was once a separate kingdom, but is now a continuous part of the greater city of Kathmandu, a half hour taxi ride from our hotel.

Anyone who has been to Kathmandu will know Durbar Square. It is one of the must-see sights in the city. It consists of several temples, one for each of the country's main religions and a former royal palace, all of which have been restored. It's a World Heritage Site, justifiably so, since it is mostly about 500 years old, medieval in our terms. Foreigners have to buy a ticket to get in, but once we had dumped our gear at the venue, we were able to take a good look round, take photographs and so on. It's very touristy, of course, and a bit like comparable European sites, for example Pisa.

The organisation of the event was a little like the Himalayan version of "island time", so although we were down as the third act, after the gates were opened and the seats filled, when no one else had turned up, we went on first. Electricity is a bit erratic in Kathmandu, and he sound crew never did resolve stray earth hum and crackling that drifted around the big PA. In fact, in the middle of our third song, the power went done and we carried on playing acoustic, before it came up again a minute or so later!

setting up the stage in the Patan Museum

We had 30 minutes playing 6 songs. Warren's washboard went down a storm, as usual, and we finished off with the entire audience - mostly Nepali but with a sprinkling of expats - singing along to my song "Leaving Blues"!

By the time we got back to our hotel it was nearly midnight and we were hungry, but they have an all night staff and we could get a meal, so I finished off the day with a plate of 'mo mo', Nepali dumplings. Delicious, even if a bit ambitious in size!