Just in front of these, in the roundabout in the middle of the road, is an even smaller sign that reads in Nepali, "Preserve our historic city." While placed here by different groups and for different reasons, these signs all indicate that Bhaktapur is a traditional city. In fact, they are just a few of the many signs left by the Nepalese government, the local municipality, foreign development agencies, and tourist institutions that welcome the visitor to Bhaktapur, Nepalıs "Hindu medieval city," the nationıs "cultural capital." Moreover, as became clear in my interviews, Bhaktapurıs residents also tended to imagine the city as "traditional," as opposed to the valleyıs two other major cities, Patan and Kathmandu (as well as to the "West"), which in their opinion had become modern and developed.

    What is the "experience" of a traditional city? My basic argument is that lived worlds are a temporality that is formed by a shuttling between individual pedestrian knowledges and social maps. Yet, there is not one "master map" of Bhaktapur. Accordingly, I concentrate on the social logics of three chief ones: the cadastral logic of the mandala map, the commodification of the tourist map , and the governmentality of the government map.