A stupa on the road to Lhasa
Nobody knows exactly when Boudhanath was first built. Newar chronicles link it to the Licchavi kings of the first millennium, and Tibetan tradition tells of its building by a poultry keeper's widow and her sons. What is clear is that it sat on the main trade route between the valley and Tibet, and that for centuries Tibetan traders, pilgrims and lamas stopped here to pray for a safe crossing of the Himalaya.
Until the mid-20th century, Boudha was a small village in fields, with a few Tibetan and Sherpa families and a lama who cared for the stupa. Everything changed after 1959. Tibetan refugees settled here, and from the late 1960s monasteries of all the main schools of Tibetan Buddhism were founded round the stupa, often by lamas who had escaped. The village became a town of monks, traders, artists and students from across the world.
The April 2015 earthquake cracked the harmika, the square section bearing the painted eyes, and the spire. The upper part was taken down and rebuilt with gilded copper, funded largely by donations from Buddhist devotees, and the stupa was reconsecrated in November 2016. Today the circuit is busier than ever, with new homes for Tibetan, Sherpa and Himalayan families rising in every direction.
