Budhanilkantha Temple

The dating is not settled. One account attributes the carving to the seventh-century Licchavi monarch Vishnugupta; other sources differ, and a commonly repeated figure of fourteen hundred years has no inscriptional backing in anything consulted. An open-air shrine with no enclosing temple building over the principal image.

The image is the point. A five-metre monolith of the sleeping Vishnu, lying on the serpent Shesha in water, is one of the great pieces of sculpture in the Himalaya, and there is no building over it: the sky is the roof. A royal taboo still attaches to it. The kings of Nepal did not visit, on the belief that a reigning monarch who looked on the image would die.

Access. Foreign visitors are reported to be forbidden to touch the statue's feet, a devotional act reserved to others. No broader restriction was documented. Nepal restricts entry to several major temples, sometimes only to the inner sanctum and sometimes to the whole compound. Where this page records a restriction it is what sources state; where sources conflict it says so. Confirm locally before travelling a long way.