" The Valley was settled, civilised and debauched - a depthless lake levelling out to a cluster of paddy-fringed temple cities that eventually merged into a sprawling dust bowl of a metropolis. Today the Bagmati [river] has shrunk to a snail's trail of gooey sewage. Modern-day Kathmandu festers around it, three million souls crouched across 900 square kilometres, hoarding the fat of the land, awaiting the day of reckoning. "
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![Rabi Thapa quote : The Valley was settled, civilised and debauched - a depthless lake levelling out to a cluster of paddy-fringed temple cities that eventually merged into a sprawling dust bowl of a metropolis. Today the Bagmati [river] has shrunk to a snail's trail of gooey sewage. Modern-day Kathmandu festers around it, three million souls crouched across 900 square kilometres, hoarding the fat of the land, awaiting the day of reckoning.](/image/1113020.jpg)