The river of life and the British cemetery.
At the end of a strangely quiet lane, behind a metal gate, a few motorbikes weave lazily around lost pedestrians. A sleepy Nepali dog pretends to guard the entrance, as if anyone would wander into this forgotten corner of the city by mistake. The place sits tucked between the British and Indian embassy compounds, in a small hollow dominated by the bright hills of Kathmandu, still glistening after a night of monsoon storms. It’s hard to imagine the rice fields and jungle patches that must have bordered this area just a few decades ago, back when this whole estate belonged to the representatives of the former British Empire and stood outside the city limits. Time passed, the Empire dissolved, Kathmandu sprawled across the valley, swallowing every last bit of countryside, except, it seems, this tiny green pocket of lush trees where I now stand.
I nudge the dog, who growls awake, and knock on the locked gate until an elderly, toothless woman shuffles out of her hut and opens it for me. She greets me with a tired Namaste and waves me in, clearly unfazed by yet another foreigner, though they must be rare here.
She is the keeper of the dead, or rather the one who occasionally lets the living visit them. And not just any dead: the British dead, or those connected to them.
I’ve come to visit the British Cemetery of Kathmandu, a place forgotten by the city, far from the traffic, far from the tourist trails, far from time itself. It comes alive only once a year, during the British Remembrance ceremony.
Inside, an orderly jungle gives it a forgoten English botanical garden feel, offers its shade to about a hundred scattered graves. A few moss‑blackened monuments rise from the lush vegetation, but most graves are just small plaques, nearly invisible under ferns and tall grass. You end up stepping on them without noticing.
Here lie early colonial settlers, adventurers, travelers whose journeys ended abruptly in Nepal, lovers of the country who chose it as their final home, and many unknown souls whose stories were never written and now survive only through a mossy stone.
There’s the slightly grand tomb of Dr. Wright, an English physician of the Empire’s golden days, resting eternally beside his beloved Cecilia since 1873. Nepal was completely cut off from the world then. The possessions of the former East-India Company had become part of the Empire, but Nepal remained independent, though linked through the famous Gurkha soldiers “loaned” to the British to help suppress uprisings.
Dr. Wright must have spent his last years in this remote valley, treating the Resident and his entourage, perhaps even nobles of the royal court, maybe Jung Bahadur Rana himself, the powerful prime minister who became the first Nepali dignitary to travel to Europe. The plaque doesn’t say. We only know he succeeded Dr. Henry, whose one‑year‑old son lies in a strange dry basin marked by two small steles.
Children who died young are heartbreakingly common here, at least ten graves scattered around the park, even into the 1970s, a stark reminder of Nepal’s harsh living conditions and limited healthcare until quite recently. I pause at the tiny plaque of little Gordon, born on Christmas Day and gone the next morning, in 1971.
Here’s Freddie, a barman who died at 78 in 1994, proudly noted as the first, and probably still one of the only Englishmen to obtain Nepali citizenship. Was he employed by the legendary Boris Lissanevitch, buried nearby with part of his family? Boris, his mother the Countess Alexandronova from Odessa, his Danish second wife, and two of his children all rest here after a life worthy of a Hollywood saga. His story, told in the locally famous Tiger for Breakfast, spans from Ukrainian cadet before the Russian Revolution, to ballet dancer in Monaco, to dandy in colonial Calcutta.
He founded the Royal Hotel, Kathmandu’s first international hotel, then the Yak & Yeti restaurant (still open today), and famously organized lavish jungle parties, including one of the last tiger hunts on elephant back for young Queen Elizabeth's visit to Nepal in 1963 . His flamboyant life ended in poverty, and he now lies here, in a Kathmandu he would hardly recognize.
Kathmandu has always attracted dreamers, but sometimes devoured those who came too close to its artificial paradises. A dozen modest graves of young men from the 1960s and early 70s hint at the hippy wave and its excesses. Their plaques reveal nothing; we can only imagine.
Some tragedies are sadly spelled out in all their cruel reality. The entire Wilkins family rests here after the September 1992 plane crash that killed 167 people during a failed Pakistan Airlines landing—just 59 days after a similar Thai Airways crash. Nepal’s (still) troubled aviation history has left its mark even in this peaceful garden.
A few Nepali graves also tell the story of the deep ties between this country and Britain: a former Gurkha, a member of the Rana family, some Christian missionaries who died in the midst of their work.
Cemeteries are said to be places of memory, but only if someone remembers.
Here, the stories of travelers, explorers, Westerners seeking new horizons, and a few unlucky souls are frozen forever, watched only by the thousands of Kathmandu deities that give this valley its dense spiritual aura, perhaps the very thing some of them came looking for.
I leave the dog and the old caretaker to the quietness they guard, closing the anonymous gate behind me on this garden at the end of the world, outside the world.
Another place of life and death, but with a completely different meaning, one of the holiest Hindu pilgrimage sites on Earth. I am now in Pashupatinath (also read Shiva party).
That day, cremations along the Bagmati River are in full swing. Bamboo stretchers are being made on the spot, first in first out.
Families gather by the water while priests prepared the funeral pyres. The eldest son, dressed in a simple white cloth, shaves his head before performing the final rituals.
No cries, no tears, just a certain agitation where our Western eyes struggle to detect emotion. Perhaps because, in this tradition, death isn’t an end. It’s merely a passage.
Other pyres burn quietly under the watch of a single priest. More bodies arrive, casually laid on the ground waiting for a free gath.
Smoke drifts across the valley. Local visitors, even young couples, watch from the opposite bank before climbing the steps with pink ice creams in hand. Cheeky monkeys wander around looking for leftover offerings.
When a pyre finishes burning, the ashes are simply swept into the rive, symbolising the link between life and death, believed to break the cycle of reincarnation for those who die here. The river dissolves the ashes and becomes the only memorial. Only the river remembers, the place does not.
At Pashupatinath, there are no plaques, no life stories carved in stone, no visitors trying to decipher the past, no historical curiosity. The river flows, the flames burn, the ashes disolve in water, life moves on, life returns. Life simply is.
The Kathmandu Valley wraps its inhabitants in mystery and spirituality. It has drawn many visitors, some died here and remain for eternity, mostly forgotten, but with a small green sanctuary for anyone who wishes to visit. And it is the sacred ground where Shiva’s hair, symbolized by the Bagmati River, softened the fall of divine energy and protected the Earth, allowing souls to pass from life to life.
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