I don’t know what it is about Nepal that has always fascinated me but when choosing where to go this April, Kathmandu seemed like the most logical place for me. After flying in over the Himalayas I knew I had made a good decision.

Before starting my trek to Annapurna Base Camp I decided to spend a few days in Kathmandu. Or “dustmandu” as the locals call it.

Kathmandu was a whirlwind three days for me, spent walking around the city, lost most of the times since street names are not a thing in Nepal, visiting the oodles of temples scattered around the streets.

There are so many temples to see in Kathmandu, the temples being the street markers that will guide you back home. My favourite discovery was coming upon the Seto Machhen-dranath Temple (Jan Bahal). This temple is hidden away, not directly on the streets of Kathmandu, so finding this gem was a true delight.

After already having had walked by and stopped at a handful of temples, I was admiring the beauty of one temple, surrounded by clay pots and people selling fruits and flowers amidst the dustiness of the city and the rubble from surrounding buildings that had been affected by the 2015 earthquake, when another tourist came over and informed me how to get to the Seto Machhen-dranath Temple.

“There’s another temple hidden beyond those walls,” she said. “Go around the back of this temple and walk through the blue archway.”

Had she not gone out of her way to tell me this, I probably never would have found that temple. So taking her advice, I went around back of the first temple at one of the many junctions in the city, passed by clay pots stacked up to my shoulders and went through the blue arch.

Coming out on the other side was like stepping through into a calm oasis amidst the craziness that is “dustmandu.”

Seto Machhen-dranath Temple is completely surrounded by buildings, tucked away in a courtyard, sheltering it from the dust and traffic outside.

The temple itself did not appear to suffer much damage from the earthquake and was surrounded by a beautiful large gate that appeared to protect it from the outside. There were many different little places to worship around the temple before entering the large iron gates to walk around Seto Machhen-dranath.

Inside the gates, the temple had doors on each of the four walls that people would touch before continuing around to the next door, walking all the way around until the returned to the entrance (or exit) of the temple.

It was remarkably quiet in this little courtyard, the noise of cars honking somewhere far off in the distance, the sounds of pigeons cooing and people murmuring being the primary sounds. So it comes as a bit of a shock when you walk back through the blue arch and in to the dusty streets of Kathmandu, motorbikes whipping by.