'Nepali' Carpets

Axel's wearing his 'Free Tibet' shirt, which automatically cut the price by 5%

This is Axel.

As you can see from this post and this post, we are in love with buying carpets. I never really cared about buying things before, and Terah has never really been a big shopper either. But when it comes to carpets, Dubai infected us with the bug.

The carpets here in Nepal are all from somewhere else. There is no 'Nepali' carpet. But then again it was in Dubai that we fell in love with carpets, and the Emiratis have never made a carpet in their life. Everything we bought there was from Iran or Kashmir.

Here they also have Kashmiri ones, but they also have a lot of Afghani as well. But the most they have are Tibetan.

There is a refugee camp near Axel's work. You can watch these women weave carpets all day. You can also have a carpet custom made by choosing the color, size, and design. However, you must be patient as most of these carpets take months to finish. These are just a couple of random photos we took.

If you want to meet Tibetans, you can either go to northern India or Nepal. There are lots of Tibetan 'refugee' areas here. I use that term loosely because they are pretty much in society to stay. Even our landlord is Tibetan. They stick together and most are rich. They do beautiful furniture and after you get used to them, the carpets are pretty cool too.

They main themes with the Tibetan carpets are the dragon and the phoenix. The dragon is supposed to symbolize the male power that brings good luck, and the phoenix symbolizes the female . So most of the carpets have something to do with them.

We decided to get some and went to the Tibetan carpet street. After going to about five stores and figuring out the price (they are not as good at haggling here, they go right to the price and then go down only a bit).

We decided on getting a pair of these kind. We really liked the black and the dragons have five claws which is supposed to represent the emperor. Pre 1920s no one could have a five clawed dragon in their house except the emperor. Now everyone has them. I like the phoenix on this one.

Then I also fell in love with this red one too. I like it because this one can be hung on the wall. I also like the contrast of the blue and reds. The Phoenix is cool too.

But lately Terah is really falling in love with Afghanis. Our Dubai friends (the Allens) had a lot of these in their house and we really were impressed by how the colors and patterns grew on you the longer you looked at them. Also they really look almost native American.

When we saw the black one we said our secret word (I hate that one!) to each other. Then Terah was looking at some red Kashmiris but when she saw this one:

She just about died. I could see on her face she wanted it in the worst way. Kashmiris are everywhere, so we decided to go with the red Afghani one too.

All in all five carpets. And I can't wait to buy more.