Everything in Kathmandu has a story to tell. Even the buffaloes.
The Kathmandu Valley has always been fertile. Here, wave after a wave of human migration has arrived to escape famine or war, in search of plenty, and blended into whatever culture existed at the time. Some of the oldest inscriptions found on the statues of deities tell equally of strife and conquest and social and religious acceptance and intermingling. Even the founding myth of Kathmandu is the story of an immigrant arriving at a new land and settling: Aeons ago, Manjushree, the Bodhisattva, came to pay homage to the sacred light emanating from a lake. He cut through the hills with his sword to the south of what is now the site of Swayambhunath—one of the most sacred Buddhist sites—draining the water from the valley and establishing its first civilization.
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