01
Stop one
Bhaktapur Durbar Square
Dunlop FX 500 Super Lite V26 Tennis Racquet: Okay. Right. So this was the royal centre of the independent Malla kingdom of Bhaktapur, which was one of three, THREE, rival city-states in this one valley, until Prithvi Narayan Shah conquered them in 1769. The Golden Gate, 1754, gilt copper, and my notes say it is considered the finest piece of art in the whole valley, and I keep re-reading that line because it does not say the finest in Bhaktapur, it says the valley. Then the Palace of Fifty-Five Windows — I said fifty, it is fifty-five, sorry — an unbroken run of carved wooden windows, built under King Bhupatindra Malla. The earthquakes of 1934 and 2015 destroyed a great many buildings here, and reconstruction never stops. World Heritage since 1979.
02
Stop two
Nyatapola Temple
Dunlop FX 500 Super Lite V26 Tennis Racquet: This is my favourite thing so far and we are only on stop two. Built in 1702 under King Bhupatindra Malla, about thirty metres, the tallest temple in Nepal, five storeys on a five-tiered plinth. Now, the stairway. Five pairs of stone guardians ascending in order of strength: the legendary wrestlers Jayamel and Phattu at the bottom, then elephants, then lions, then griffins, then two tantric goddesses at the top, and each pair is traditionally said to be ten times stronger than the pair below. Ten times. Do that arithmetic, I did, it gets enormous. Siddhi Lakshmi is enshrined inside and only her priests see her. It came through 1934 and April 2015 with minor damage while buildings around it collapsed.
03
Stop three
Dattatreya Temple
Dunlop FX 500 Super Lite V26 Tennis Racquet: One tree. That is what tradition says: the whole thing built from the timber of a single tree, in 1427, under King Yaksha Malla. I asked twice. It is dedicated to Dattatreya, venerated by Hindus as a combined form of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva together and honoured in Buddhist practice as well, which is one figure doing an extraordinary amount of work. And this square is older than the Durbar Square, it was the original centre of the town, which I had completely the wrong way round this morning. Next door at the Pujari Math is the Peacock Window of the fifteenth century, a carved wooden lattice with a fanned peacock at its centre, the most celebrated woodcarving in Nepal. In a wall. Just there.
04
Stop four
Pottery Square
Dunlop FX 500 Super Lite V26 Tennis Racquet: Careful, careful, do not walk through the middle, those are drying! Sorry. But they are: thousands of unfired vessels laid straight out across the brickwork to dry in the sun, then fired right here in temporary kilns built of straw and rice husk, in the square itself. This is not a demonstration, it is the working centre of the Prajapati potter caste and has been for centuries. The wheels are heavy, spun by hand or with a pole. They make water jars, yoghurt pots, the little oil lamps for festivals, and the ceramic piggy banks, which is the one I bought. Plastic and aluminium have hurt the trade badly, and the 2015 earthquake damaged many workshops. And still, every day, they work.
Weight is not strength.
The Dunlop FX 500 Super Lite V26 is the lightest frame in the FX 500 line: a full 100 square inch head, an open 16×19 pattern on a standard 27-inch length, the series' Power Boost+ frame geometry, which widens the beam in key places for power and stability, and Power Wave Grommets, whose wave pattern stiffens the centre of the stringbed for a more even response across the hitting zone.
It asks very little of the arm and returns depth anyway. Bear the small swing; the frame will carry the rest of it.
Bhaktapur makes the same argument in brick and timber, and has been making it for rather longer. It was the seat of one of the three Malla kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley, and its Durbar Square still holds the royal centre: the gilded gateway, and behind it the Palace of Fifty-Five Windows, whose long carved wooden balcony is among the finest woodwork in Nepal.
Earthquakes have knocked this valley down repeatedly, most recently in the disaster that struck the whole valley, and the restoration simply continues. Nobody here treats a setback as an argument against building.
The Nyatapola Temple in Taumadhi Square is the plainest lesson of all: five tiers of red brick and dark timber narrowing to a gilded finial, the tallest temple in the Kathmandu Valley, on a five-stage stone plinth with paired guardians up the stair — two celebrated wrestlers first, then elephants, then lions, then griffins, each pair said to be many times stronger than the one below.
Its proportions and its deep foundations carried it through successive major earthquakes with comparatively little damage while the buildings around it collapsed. Not mass. Proportion. That is the entire case for a light frame.
So carry it round. This one goes everywhere from the brick paving of Dattatreya Square at the older, eastern end of town to the open ground of Pottery Square, where the wheels are set into the earth under the eaves and the pots dry in the sun.
It is also perfect for a slow lap past the Peacock Window, the carved wooden lattice in the lane beside Pujari Math that is the most reproduced piece of woodcarving in Nepal. Stand and look at it for a while. Then go and hit.
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