It’s been too long.

Oh Kathmandu, it’s been too long. But let’s not linger on the challenges of the last few years. For now I’m here.

And I’ve had a hiccup on the camera front, so no photos this time.

Has it changed? The pandemonium of the arrivals hall up at Kathmandu airport hasn’t changed. The traffic mayhem is, if anything, even worse. The only way I can cross the busiest roads is to find someone else looking to cross, tuck in behind them and follow as they weave through lines of traffic. (And especial thanks to the young man who spotted me looking hopeless and steered me across the road like an old person. Without him I might still be there). The air is so thick with diesel I could taste it.

The welcome in my hotel is just as warm. The pomelo tree in their lovely courtyard, set back from the chaos, gives a dappled shade: my refuge from the streets.

But there are changes. The earthquake in 2015 did such damage here; while most ancient temples have been repaired many buildings collapsed completely and new structures have emerged. A new temple is being built where a school once stood. Swanky new hotels rise, incongruously, in the ancient streets of Thamel.

It is obligatory to get lost in Thamel - which is how I stumbled on the garden behind the Museum of Nepali Art. There js a cafe in one corner, and I sat under a jacaranda tree with my coffee. The frangipani will smell sweetly in the evening. It is mercifully quiet.

The rest of the space is divided into quarters. At one edge, a small plaque with a quote from Rumi: ‘Somewhere beyond right and wrong there is a garden. I will meet you there’. I wander on. Not a blade of grass is out of place; such a contrast to the chaos of the streets outside. There is a large, bronze vajra (it is a religious symbol. If I’d taken time to google I could tell you more). And some fibreglass statues - a reclining woman, an androgynous man. I’m trying to find a word other than peaceful to describe it, but for now that will have to do.

Surrounding the garden is a hotel, small shops and spa. Along one wall there is a series of photographs that tell the story of this space. Before the earthquake, this had been an unremarkable courtyard alongside a hotel. In 2015, within minutes, the site was destroyed. Nothing but a sea of rubble. Buildings alongside at risk of total collapse.

I don’t know who took the decision, but this rubble was cleared and the garden planted in only three months. There is a photograph of the gang of workers, dusty and disheveled and rightly pleased with themselves. I know that there were still people living in tents at the time (I visited and saw them), and you could argue that homes could have taken priority. But the men and women who survived the trauma of the earthquake and rebuilt Nepal also needed a restorative space; and here it is. I love it even more now.