The British Cemetery in Kathmandu

Few tourists would think to visit the British Cemetery in Kathmandu, as I did this afternoon. It's in a very secluded spot just down from the Indian Embassy, this having been the British Ambassador's residence up until the middle of the last century. In fact it's very easy to just walk right past it without realising it's there; no sign indicates what lies behind its high wall and chained padlocked gate. Hover around for a few minutes outside though and the caretaker who lives inside will spot you and let you in. Her curious dog will escort you around the graves, which are immaculately maintained - an amazing thing for Kathmandu. The headstones reflect styles ancient and modern, final gestures both ostentatious and modest, and sentiments tragic and triumphant. They mark, inter alia, the last resting place of the victims of avalanche and altitude sickness, of the diseases that killed children in Victorian times, of bon viveurs and missionaries. There's even a Jewish grave tucked away at the back of the cemetery, its inscription partly in Hebrew.

Some headstones really stop you in your tracks. I was particularly struck by the tragedy that befell the Wilkins family, husband and pregnant wife with three children who all died in the PIA air disaster of 1992. Reflective of the Wilkins couple having been Christian missionaries is the statement of faith on their headstone, an arguably defiant verse from the Gospel of John - "I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand." And I felt for the British residency surgeon, Dr Wright, who must have felt so impotent in spite of his profession as he lost his young wife in February 1873 followed by his only child, aged 18 months, the following June.

There is also some humour to be found. There's the grave of former British Army 10th Gurkha Rifles officer, Micheal John Cheney, "Friend of Nepal", with a Buddhist stupa that I think must have deliberately comically-lugubrious eyes. John Richard Fletcher's epitaph states that "To have known him was to have known laughter", while three year old David Wilson's memorial reflects that he was one "who chuckled through his short life and so enjoyed the sounds of Nepal". A favourite has to be the headstone that lies over Freddie Bowles, "the bartender bard - who was the first Englishman to become a Nepalese citizen and who found his Shangri-La in Nepal".

My newly-written Will stipulates that if I die in Nepal that I be laid to rest in the British Cemetery. Where better? I hope that someone can find something good to write about me in spite of the vituperative content of some of my Blog posts.