Some memories remain permanently vivid.
For me, one of those memories is waking before dawn on 3rd August 1983 in Kathmandu.
For a few moments I did not know where I was.
My wife Champa was asleep beside me, while our two children, Michael and Sharon, slept quietly in their single beds across the room. Gradually the events of the previous day returned to me:
after nearly twenty-four exhausting hours of travel, we had finally arrived in Nepal for the first time since our marriage twelve years earlier.
We were staying in the home of my wife’s eldest sister, surrounded by extended family who had welcomed us emotionally and enthusiastically late into the evening.
And above the house, illuminated against the darkness, stood the mysterious hilltop stupa of Swayambhunath.
I had been fascinated by this place long before ever seeing it in person. Through photographs and stories from my wife’s Buddhist family, Swayambhu had already become deeply symbolic in my imagination.
I could not wait for daylight.
Walking Toward the Hill
I dressed quietly and slipped outside alone into the early morning darkness.
The house stood at the end of a short farm lane, and almost immediately I became aware of distant music:
drums,
singing,
and what I later understood to be the sound of the sarangi.
As the first light of dawn began to appear, I reached the end of the lane and stopped in amazement.
Hundreds of people were already walking toward Swayambhunath:
young and old,
men and women,
families and individuals,
all moving steadily uphill through the growing light.
I soon learned this was the sacred month of Gunla, an important period within Newar Buddhism associated with devotion, reflection, and spiritual practice.
What struck me most strongly was that Buddhism here did not appear separate from ordinary life.
It flowed naturally through the community itself.
This was my true introduction to Buddhism not simply as a religion, but as a lived culture and daily way of being.
The Sound of Dawn
Since that first morning more than forty years ago, I have returned to Swayambhunath during almost every visit to Nepal.
And whenever possible, I still prefer to arrive around dawn.
At that hour the atmosphere feels entirely different.
The silence is relative rather than absolute because monks are already beginning their morning recitations. Drums beat steadily, horns occasionally echo across the hilltop, and deep rhythmic chanting emerges from nearby monasteries.
This is not the repetitive chanting many tourists expect.
It is the recitation of Buddhist sutras:
measured,
disciplined,
ancient.
Without the daytime crowds and endless cameras, the place feels calmer, more contemplative, and somehow more authentic.
The Dhammapada
“There are no footprints in the sky; the awakened are freed from worldly illusion.”
Circumambulating the Stupa
I usually begin by sitting quietly inside one of the monasteries for a few minutes, listening to the monks chanting before joining the clockwise flow around the great white stupa itself.
My right hand turns the prayer wheels as I walk slowly around the perimeter.
Within each wheel are written prayers and mantras, traditionally believed to spread blessings and compassion as the wheel turns.
Every few paces I stop briefly before the embedded Buddha images before continuing onward again in quiet contemplation.
The rhythm becomes deeply meditative:
walking,
turning,
observing,
listening.
No urgency.
No destination.
Only presence.
Returning Again and Again
Eventually the morning draws on and ordinary life resumes.
Breakfast waits back at my brother-in-law’s house below the hill, and the city gradually awakens into movement and noise.
But something about Swayambhunath at dawn has remained with me throughout my life.
Not only because it was my first profound experience of Buddhist culture in Nepal,
but because it revealed something essential:
that spirituality can exist quietly within ordinary daily life,
woven naturally into community, ritual, sound, movement, and silence.
Even now, after many years and many return visits, dawn at Swayambhu still feels like coming home to something deeply familiar.