The capital city of Nepal, Kathmandu is one of the oldest cities in a country. The culturally rich city of glory has thousands of art, sculpture, and many religious monuments, temples, and buildings which dates back to thousands of year, there are even some places and temples which did not have any specific dates of its origin like Pashupati Nath temple.

Most of the religious monument and ancient artifacts around the city has lost its glory and its eye-catching beauty. Although Kathmandu includes seven world heritage sites i.e Swaymbhu, Kathmandu Durbar Square, Patan Durbar Square, Boudhanath Stupa, Bhaktapur, Changunarayan Temple, and Boudhanath Stupa. Moreover, it’s ancient identity has been crippled down under the dust and dirt of an over-polluted and populated city.

We Nepalese have great pride in our ancestor’s artworks and everyone loves to talk about these ancient masterpieces. But in reality, we ignore to care and maintain our heritage due to which most of our heritage is smudge under the ignorance of its people. Meanwhile, a man name Yaddhab Lal Kayastha has a dream to clean up every single heritage of the entire Kathmandu valley.

Yaddhab Lal Kayastha Restoring and Cleaning the Heritage

Yaddhab Lal Kayastha is the retired Nepal Army who used to own a restaurant in Thamel, Kathmandu. He is now a social activist who is working and inspiring people to preserved and save local heritage. Mr. Kayastha is restoring, cleaning, and saving the archeological sites of Kathmandu and spreading awareness among local communities to take action to preserve what our ancestors have left for us. When asked what he thinks about the response he’s been getting, Kayastha says that it drives him to work even harder;

“I’m aware that people are watching me. And I don’t want to let them down,”

His selfless work has received a corporative response from the local people as well as from the local level government. And recently, the ward chair of Suryabinayak – 9 has officially announced to help Mr. Yaddhab Lal Kayastha in his mission to clean the city’s heritage.

Sampada Bachau Mahaabhiyan Campaign

After the wide appreciation of Mr. Kayastha’s effort, he led a campaign that aims to clean the ancient masterpiece as much as possible. Surprisingly, he and his campaign cleaning and restoring historical sites has been into action for almost two and a half years. However, in response to local people he says;

“We boast a lot about how rich we are when it comes to culture and heritage. But when you go and visit these spaces, the picture is different. Many of these sites are in a sorry state and no one has been doing anything about it,”

According to Sampada Bachau Mahaabhiyan, they have restored hundreds of temples, ponds, hitis, and falchas of Kathmandu valley so far. Regarding his campaign, he stated:

“we are just a group of people who love heritage. We get notified about such monuments from locals after which we work with them to restore it.

Troubles And Threats In Campaigns

After spending years in selfless acts, he and his initiation has faced many troubles, and sometimes Mr. Kayastha often receives threats too. Mainly private construction companies put him in trouble because they want to build roads and buildings over the heritage but with support of local people, Mr. Kayastha has so far sucessful to secure heritage. Sometimes he even receives bibe offer from these companies but nothing has slowed him or the campaign down yet.

Future Steps Of Sampada Bachau Mahaabhiyan

The overall plan of Sampada Bachau Mahaabhiyan is to preserve the Country’s historical and cultural significance. According to him, there are more than 1000 hitis in Kathmandu alone. However, Depratment of Archeology only has a record of 500 hitis. Therefore, he want to have the breif description and location about remaning hitis.

And for that, he considered local people as the most reliable and authentic source. he believes the local people have a better idea about their local heritage than any government body. So instead of going to the government body, he prefers to visit locals who have a better idea of what is in their locality.

For instance, his future plans are to collect all the possible data from the locals and expand his campaign so that he could secure and restore more ancient monuments of the Kathmandu valley.