Online chess revisited

Back in 1995, I found myself stumbling upon a fascinating new world of online chess. It was still the early days of Malaysia’s Internet connectivity, and the idea that you could play someone halfway across the world in real time was nothing short of thrilling. I wrote a story about this in one of my chess columns in December that year. A month later, in February 1996, I followed up with another story, this time about the Internet Chess Club (ICC) which had already captivated me to the point where I was logging in almost every day.

There was something almost magical about it. I was in Penang and find myself matched against someone in New York or Paris or Singapore, playing a real-time game on a text-based interface powered by Telnet. The chessboard was clunky, rendered in ASCII, but it worked. And for the time, it was revolutionary.

Blitz chess was already wildly popular then, but what really caught my imagination was the Fischer time control. You’d play with something like "3 15"—three minutes per player, plus 15 seconds added after every move. It was a strange new rhythm compared to our old-school five-minute blitzes. And since I’d registered as a member, my games were rated by the system. Every result tweaked your rating, right there and then. That little jolt of satisfaction (or disappointment) was addictive.

Handles, nicknames, anonymous opponents—it was a wild west of chess pseudonyms. My own handle was ssquah, naturally, while others used more cryptic tags. I even ran into an old friend from Singapore, FIDE Master Chia Chee Seng, who was an ICC administrator and helped ease me into the environment. By then, ICC had introduced paid memberships—US$49 a year, or half that for students—and while it might have seemed steep, the platform delivered. Even computers were showing up as opponents, ready to play you anytime.

The biggest usability leap came with the slics22f interface. Unlike Telnet, it gave you a graphical board and mouse-click functionality. I even demonstrated it at a local Internet Society meeting in USM. It felt like we were peeking into the future, and we were.

Fast forward nearly 30 years, and that future has well and truly arrived. Platforms like Chess.com and Lichess now host millions of users round the clock with sleek, polished interfaces, live broadcasts, integrated engines and on-demand lessons. I’m still amazed that I can log on today and watch grandmasters battle it out live while the system evaluates their every move and annotates in real time, often faster than I can process what's happening.

But perhaps what’s most striking isn’t just the playing. It’s how chess tournaments have caught up with the Internet too. These days, most over-the-board events are run using pairing software like Swiss Manager, which automates round-by-round matchups with mathematical precision. And once the pairings and results are generated, they’re seamlessly uploaded to Chess-Results.com, a global repository where you can track tournaments live from anywhere in the world. Whether it's a school-level event in Kuala Lumpur or an open in Reykjavik, results, pairings and standings are just a click away. The transparency and efficiency it offers are remarkable, and a far cry from handwritten pairing cards.

Of course, with progress comes new concerns. Online cheating has cast a shadow on the digital scene, and platforms now employ sophisticated anti-cheating tools: everything from statistical pattern detection to AI-based behavioural analysis. Some tournaments even require players to set up multiple webcams to ensure fair play. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, but the platforms are taking it seriously.

Even the way we consume chess has changed. In the past, if you missed a great game, that was that. Today, you have commentators like Daniel Naroditsky or Levy Rozman (aka GothamChess) explaining the key moments in colourful, engaging streams. YouTube have turned grandmasters into influencers. Hikaru Nakamura, once the enfant terrible of American chess, is now a global streaming star, toggling between bullet games and stock tips. It’s entertainment, education and sport all rolled into one.

And yet, as I look back at those old stories of mine, I realise that the core thrill hasn’t changed: that moment when you make your move and wait for your opponent’s reply, wherever they might be. Back then, it was ASCII boards and FTP downloads. Today, it’s touchscreen apps and cloud servers. But the chess is still eternal.

It’s tempting to feel nostalgic for the simplicity of those early Internet days. The dial-up sounds, the tiny online communities, the excitement of discovering something entirely new. But I also marvel at how far we’ve come. From ICC to Swiss Manager, from slics22f to Stockfish-assisted prep, from Telnet logins to mobile alerts saying, “Your opponent has made a move.” The game has grown in ways I never imagined.

Thirty years from now, someone else might look back and say, “Remember Chess.com? Remember Lichess? That was when online chess really took off.” And maybe, somewhere in their memory or search engine, they’ll find a trace of that curious Malaysian player who once logged in as ssquah and couldn’t believe his luck.

Nepal 2025, Day Seven (II. Thamel)

For the first time during our Nepal trip, our Nandaka Vihara group was left to our own devices after lunch. Bhante Dhammasubho had decided to return to the Gokarna Forest Resort on his own, which meant we were free to explore Kathmandu however we liked. And really, where else to go on our final full day but back to Thamel for some last-minute shopping?

Yes, we would be flying back to Penang tomorrow, so this was our last proper opportunity to walk the streets, soak up the buzz and see if there was anything else worth cramming into our suitcases. 

For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, we wandered the streets of Thamel, quite possibly retracing the same routes over and over, going round in circles, but not really minding it. We weren’t looking for singing bowls this time. That had already been sorted two days ago. Somehow, there was always something else to catch the eye. Like, bumping into an unexpected Nepalese wedding. The bride and groom, dressed in their finest on their most momentous day, had alighted the car and escaped down a side road to attend to their function.

I lost count of how many times we passed the Little Buddha Restaurant. It became something of a running joke. By and large, we stuck to the well-trodden tourist paths, but at one point we did stray down a road less frequented by outsiders. And perhaps it was there that we saw a little more of the “real” Nepal: narrower streets, grittier and gloomier, more dust and dirt, goods that looked a little less polished, but all the more authentic. It was, oddly enough, quite refreshing.

Later in the evening, we met up with our guide again, who took us to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. This was our second Chinese meal in Kathmandu. We'd all agreed that we’d had enough of Nepalese food for now. Last night’s dinner had been pretty good, but tonight’s was nothing worth mentioning. Still, it scratched the itch for something familiar, even if the taste didn’t quite hit the mark.

As we left the restaurant, for the first time during our trip, the rain came down. It started as a drizzle, light enough to be ignored, but picked up just enough to get us wet. Saw See always have her umbrella ready, so she and to a lesser extent, me, was spared the full water works. By the time we reached the hotel, though, the rain had already stopped. 

And so this marks my final jotting from Nepal. The next morning, we checked out of the hotel at eight, headed to Tribhuvan International Airport, and caught our flight home. Everything went smoothly, and by just before midnight, we were back at our doorstep. Feeling very pooped and tired, but grateful for the experience.

The man who connected Malaysia

It all began quietly in 1983. In a lab at Universiti Malaya, Dr Mohamed Awang-Lah, then head of the university’s computer centre, was already thinking several steps ahead of everyone else. Even then, he could see the potential for Malaysia to connect with the rest of the world through emerging computer networks. It was still the pre-Internet era, and most people were just trying to get their heads around floppy disks and dot matrix printers.

He collaborated with institutions in Canada and the United States, laying down a skeleton framework for early data exchange. By the late 1980s, he had helped establish RangKoM (Rangkaian Komputer Malaysia), a government-supported academic network linking research institutes and public universities. It relied on clunky X.25 lines and primitive routing, but it worked. RangKoM proved that a national academic network was possible, and laid the foundation for something more ambitious.

That came in 1992, when Malaysia’s first full-fledged Internet service provider, JARING, was launched. Dr Awang-Lah was its founding director, and it was run under the wing of MIMOS, the Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic Systems. The name stood for “Joint Advanced Research Integrated Networking,” but more importantly, it marked the country's formal entry into the global Internet community. JARING replaced RangKoM by absorbing its infrastructure and extending services to the public.

In its first year, JARING had only about 200 users. These were not casual consumers but mostly academics, tech hobbyists and engineers willing to pay RM50 a month for access to text-based services like Telnet, FTP and Gopher. Everything was dial-up. Everything was slow. But it was the Internet, and we were on it.

Help was hard to come by, which made JARING’s early outreach stand out. There was a JARING newsgroup on the Usenet, where people could ask questions, air grievances or simply learn from each other. Occasionally, Dr Mohamed Awang-Lah himself would appear in the thread to offer replies that were calm, detailed and technically sound. It was a rare thing: the head of an organisation engaging directly with end users on a public forum. It made an impression.

So did their technical support. In the mid-1990s, when dial-up modems were still temperamental and drivers didn't always play nice with your desktop computer, JARING technicians made house calls. I once had the benefit of this in Penang. A young technician came over all the way from KL, traced the problem, fixed it and stayed long enough to show me how to troubleshoot in the future. It felt like being part of a quiet, growing movement.

By the late 1990s, JARING was no longer just a research backbone. It had become the primary commercial ISP in the country. Other service providers leased bandwidth from JARING. They introduced higher-speed dial-ups, leased lines for businesses, and eventually even international Internet gateways. For a brief but significant window, JARING was the Internet in Malaysia.

That changed in 1996, when Telekom Malaysia launched TM Net. Backed by greater resources, a nationwide telephone infrastructure, and a massive marketing budget, TM Net quickly captured the mass market. JARING, still operating under MIMOS, struggled to keep up. It had the engineering talent but not the commercial muscle. The difference in user support was stark: JARING remained deeply technical, while TM Net courted the masses.

Still, JARING held on. It rolled out broadband, hosted servers, introduced VOIP services and continued serving corporations and niche users who valued reliability over flash. But the ground was shifting. In 2013, the government handed JARING over to a private entity, Utusan Printcorp, in an effort to revive or reposition it. That, unfortunately, never materialised.

The irony was that JARING had always been ahead of its time. It introduced video-on-demand and broadband services before Malaysians were ready to embrace them. But without control over national infrastructure, it couldn’t scale fast enough to compete.

By 2015, JARING was no more. The company went into liquidation. Domain names were deactivated. Servers shut down. Email accounts disappeared. The digital bridge that had once carried Malaysia’s first Internet packets quietly faded out of existence. And with that, the country’s Internet pioneer bowed out and left behind a legacy that many now overlook.

But for many of us, JARING represented something special. It wasn’t just an Internet provider. It was a pioneer, built by visionaries, and run by engineers who believed in the mission. It was where we learned how the Internet worked, where we got our first static IP, where we discovered how to access a world that was slowly coming online and through it all, there was Dr Mohamed Awang-Lah—calm, firm and deeply committed to the idea that Malaysia deserved a place in the global digital conversation.

He didn’t just connect us to the Internet. He connected us to each other.

The art of endurance

Image from The Star online portal

Huge crowds turned up last night for the annual Novena and Feast at St Anne’s Church, now formally recognised as a Minor Basilica following its elevation some years back. I didn’t join the throng but I had gone a few days earlier when the place was less packed and one could walk around without bumping into anyone.

The celebration spans nine days, culminating on the night of the 26th of July, when thousands of Catholics—and quite possibly not a few non-Catholics too—descend on the church from all over the peninsula. We've heard of road accidents before, but thankfully, none for quite a while already. The aftermath of these few thousand people usually means that the roads, the main road especially, will be filled with garbage from the pilgrims and street vendors alike. 

The open spaces and roadsides would be chock-full of cars. Buses, especially, are a common sight, lined up neatly along the roads. Although the church is only about a kilometre from where I live, luckily my area is mostly spared the traffic jams. Still, the usual disruptions occur: the Traffic Police had cordoned off some roads around the church and rerouted vehicles into the neighbourhood, which caused some minor chaos. But we Malaysians are used to these seasonal disruptions. Every community has its festivals, and we’ve learned to live with them. Grumble a bit about the traffic maybe, but we endure. 

What’s harder to endure, though, is the usual display of Traffic Police incompetence. They had simply blocked off the main road at the traffic lights but didn’t bother to redirect traffic or even show up. They simply left it as is, seemingly adopting a couldn’t-care-less attitude. So for long stretches of time, cars were stopped at a completely empty junction, obeying traffic signals that no longer made sense. The least they could’ve done was to wave cars through the red lights. But no. Nothing of the sort. Just another reminder that in Malaysia, even routine traffic control can be too much to ask.

European summer

Poh Yu Tian is spending time in Europe playing in back-to-back tournaments in Spain and Switzerland, and now heads on to a third event in Hungary: a continuous circuit of serious chess, each event tougher than the last.

Benasque, Spain

He started off at the XLIV Open Internacional “Villa de Benasque” in early July, a sprawling event that attracted almost 500 players. With so many grandmasters at the top, Yu Tian was seeded only 26th. Even so, he held his own admirably with a 7½/10 finish. That placed him just outside the top 20. Not quite breaking through, but very much in the thick of things.

I consider his run in Benasque as a warm-up in his search for a first Grandmaster title norm. It included wins over a string of strong Spanish players and a draw against FM Michal Bartel of Poland. Most notably, he ended with a fighting draw against Spanish GM Daniel Forcen Esteban (2551). There was only one stumble: a sixth-round loss to Indian GM Gopal GN (2549). Otherwise, he was solid throughout, showing a dependable ability to stay out of trouble and rack up points against opponents in the 2100–2250 range.

But it was in Switzerland, at the Biel Masters Open, where the pressure ramped up. The Biel Festival has long been a magnet for young talents testing themselves against a deeper field, and this year’s Masters was no different. Eighth-seeded Yu Tian again scored 7½/10, this time winning six games, drawing three, and losing one. Final position, sixth among 112 players. That loss, once more, came at the hands of an Indian grandmaster, Krishnan Sasikiran (2531). Among his wins was a tidy final-round victory over GM Panchanathan Magesh Chandran (2454), which helped him close the tournament on a high note.

Biel, Switzerland

It’s worth noting a small but visible pattern: the boy seems to struggle a little against Indian GMs. But it must be acknowledged that they are strong, seasoned campaigners. Two tournaments, two defeats, both against Indian opponents, and in both cases, rather convincing losses. Not necessarily a flaw in his game, but a clear signal that to reach the next level, he must figure out how to navigate past these technically sound players who rarely give much away. Against most others in the 2400–2550 range, however, he's been holding up just fine.

Now, with the Spanish and Swiss legs behind him, Poh Yu Tian is headed to Budapest for the SixDays GM “B” event, from 27 July to 1 August. It’s a 10-player round-robin, compact and sharp, and very different from the Swiss systems he’s just come through. There’s nowhere to hide. He’ll be facing each and every opponent head-on: GM Sahaj Grover, GM Tamas Fodor Jr, and several ambitious international masters, all gunning for title norms.

This kind of format rewards consistency and psychological strength. Yu Tian has already shown this summer that he can handle long grinds and bounce back from setbacks. In Benasque, he recovered well after the loss to Gopal. In Biel, he shrugged off the Sasikiran defeat. He’s still only 15, still relatively fresh on the international circuit, and already demonstrating the sort of patience and poise many players take years to develop.

Nevertheless, I hope he’s not rushing things, no frantic push for immediate norms, no unrealistic goals. His European trip seems well thought out, each event building on the last, sharpening his game without wearing him down. This isn’t just about playing strong chess. It’s about learning how to survive the circuit: early preparation, post-mortems, long days, the slow accumulation of resilience and the occasional reminder that some opponents will simply be better on the day. But that is okay; chess is a long game.

Now to Budapest. It’s only a six-day tournament, but it could be the most intense leg of his European summer. He’s likely to be one of the youngest in the field, but by now, that’s just background noise. He’s already proven that he belongs. The question now is whether he can sustain it, day after day, in close quarters, against other title aspirants. Whatever the result, it’s another step forward.

Nepal 2025, Day Seven (I. World peace temple)

Compared to the previous days, the itinerary for our seventh day in Nepal was relatively light. After breakfast, we were driven to the Vishwa Shanti Vihara, also known as the World Peace Temple. The temple was originally founded in 1984 by Bhikshu Jnanapurnik Mahasthavir, following a generous donation of land and a newly built small monastery by a devotee. In 1997, the place saw further development thanks to the support of many Malaysian and Singaporean devotees, who had helped fund the temple’s expansion.

The main purpose behind setting up the temple was to strengthen Theravadin Buddhist education and meditation practices in Kathmandu. At the same time, the idea was to create a centre for Buddhist studies and research in Nepal. So that same year, a non-profit Buddhist school was established within the temple grounds: the Vishwa Shanti Bauddha Shikshalaya, or the World Peace Buddhist School. The school integrates general education with Buddhist Pariyatti studies and daily meditation sessions, while also offering extracurricular activities, including the occasional study tour, to give the students a more rounded education.

Bhikshu Jnanapurnik Mahasthavir passed away in 2020, but his presence is still very much felt. A near life-sized bronze statue of him, seated serenely, now holds pride of place in the Vihara’s little museum. A huge collage of the late Bhikshu adorns a wall on the top floor of the building. Interestingly, back in 1999, long before Nandaka Vihara came into being, our Chief Abbot, Bhante Dhammasubho, had spent a vassa (rains retreat) here, partly contributing his time to teaching the novice monks and nuns. According to him, the place looked much the same as it did back then, with only a few small improvements made since.

We had brought along some gifts for the resident monks, which we offered in a short ceremony. Afterwards, we moved into the inner courtyard where around 50 student monks had lined up to receive a little treat from us, mostly sweets and chocolates we’d brought from home.

 

Next: Day Seven (Thamel)

Early Internet days

I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog that I signed up for a Jaring account sometime in 1992 or 1993, but I hadn’t been able to pin down the exact year. It was all too long ago, and I’d kept no written record. So unlike me! But then, just a few days ago, I stumbled upon an old story I’d written for my chess column in The Star, dated 28 December 1995. In that piece, I had casually remarked that it was “now close to two years since I began surfing the Net.” That line helped jog my memory: I must have applied for my Jaring account sometime in 1993, and the informal North Malaysia Internet Society (NOMIS) came into being a year later.

Early 1993 was also when I began reconnecting with some of my old schoolmates. One of them told me he was using the computer network at the University of Science Malaysia to access newsgroups and communicate with people abroad. That fascinated me. I’d already been exposed to the idea of long-distance data transmission while working at Ban Hin Lee Bank in the mid-1980s. Back then, I was helping to set up the ATM Centre. Though I wasn’t a techie, sitting through meetings with programmers and system analysts gave me a decent grasp of how data could travel through telephone lines. We were working on computerising bank services as far back as 1983, and I was familiar with the idea of sending strings of information down a wire.

Around that same time, a colleague had passed me a copy of The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll, a thrilling account of how a hacker from across the world was infiltrating American university networks. That book made a lasting impression. So when my friend told me that he could send emails and participate in USENET discussions simply by having his desktop computer dial a local number into the university system through a modem, I was intrigued.

Not long after, he handed me an application form for Jaring, which was then operated by MIMOS. I was excited, but applying wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I needed approval from someone at the bank. Trust MIMOS to include that layer of bureaucratic approval, even for private individuals like me! So I approached my Senior Manager, prepared for a round of puzzled questions. Back in 1993, the Internet was practically unknown to 99.99 percent of Malaysians. But after some explanation, he signed off on my application. Phew!

The timing turned out to be fortunate. As secretary of the Penang Chess Association, I was due to accompany our team to the annual Merdeka Team Championships in Kuala Lumpur. While they competed, I submitted my form to MIMOS, along with the RM350 fee: RM300 for the annual dial-up subscription, and RM50 for processing. A few weeks later, my Jaring account came through. I was user number 321-5, the "5" here being the check digit. At that time, there were fewer than 350 Internet users in the entire country. I suppose that made me something of a pioneer.

My first modem was a borrowed, portable unit that plugged into the back of the desktop and ran at a sluggish 300bps. Eventually, I bought a more decent internal card that could do 14.4kbps. I still remember the sound of the modem connecting—the chirps, whines and crackles, all signalling that I was about to tap into the wider world. It was painfully slow by today’s standards. Browsing the worldwide web tested patience, and I learned to do more with less. But even at that speed, it opened up a new world right from my home.

Telekom Malaysia charged 13 sen per local call back then, regardless of duration. Later, they switched to four sen per minute, but Jaring negotiated a special 1511 dial-up number at just 1.5 sen per minute. Telekom eventually launched its own TM Net service in 1996 via the 1515 number.

With my new account, I immediately began exploring the Internet for chess-related content for my newspaper column. I started following international discussions, made contacts like Mark Crowther from the UK and Sam Sloan from the US, and pulled in material that otherwise would have taken weeks to arrive by post, if at all.

Then in February 1994, shortly after Chinese New Year, a group of local Internet enthusiasts gathered at the YMCA in Penang. That meeting led to the formation of NOMIS. We came from different backgrounds but shared the same curiosity and excitement. For several years, NOMIS was invited to computer fairs in Penang to demonstrate how to get online. We gave talks, set up booths, showed people how the web worked, and most of them were seeing it for the first time.

Looking back now, those really were the good old days of the Internet in Malaysia. We were explorers, figuring things out together, one dial-up connection at a time. The Internet is now so commonplace that we take it for granted, but there was a time, not that long ago, when the idea of communicating instantly with someone on the other side of the world felt nothing short of magical.

Data breach

Two SMS messages landed on my phone at exactly the same time in the dead of night. To be precise, at 2:08am. The first one read: “RM0 OTP is vzLa-0615xxxx for online trx for UOB card ending 0376 for PHP4525.38 @ Traveloka on 21/07 18:08PM. OTP expiry 22/07 02:11AM MY time.” The second came immediately after: “RM0 UOB Cards: Thank you for using your UOB Card ending 0376 @ Traveloka3DS*******5272 for PHP 4,525.38 22/07 02:08. For any enquiry please call UOB.”

I normally ignore messages like these. Scams, mostly. Usually from banks I don’t even have accounts with, or referencing card numbers that don’t match any of mine. But this was different. UOB and the last four digits of my credit card? Together in the same message? That got my attention.

So, at around 7:30am, I called UOB’s customer service to report a potential fraud. The lady at the other end confirmed that the transaction hadn’t gone through and it had been automatically reversed. Still, I requested for my card to be blocked. Just in case.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Hours later, a third SMS arrived: “RM0 OTP is fCWE-0105xxxx for online trx for UOB card ending 0376 for MYR1689.60 @ Cebu Pacific Ai on 22/07 03:18AM. OTP expiry 22/07 11:21AM MY time.”

Another transaction attempt. Same card number. This time, it was from Cebu Pacific Airline, and again, I hadn’t initiated anything. Another call to UOB. They confirmed the card was already blocked, and this new attempt never even made it to my statement. So what have I learnt from all this?

First, never ignore those strange, late-night SMSes especially if they look even remotely relevant to you. Check the details. Call the bank. You just never know. Second, don’t get lulled into a false sense of security just because the OTP goes to your phone. It’s true that the fraudster probably can’t complete the transaction without the OTP, but what if there’s a breach somewhere and they can intercept or bypass that step? It’s rare, but not impossible.

And finally, we need to ask: did the UOB system suffer a data breach? I can’t say for sure, but it’s suspicious. I barely use this card; just the occasional petrol purchase where I tap and go. No PIN, no online transactions, no manual data entry. So how could my card details end up in the wrong hands? If not a data breach, then what?

Interestingly, the timestamps suggest the transactions originated from a location in the UTC+0 time zone roughly eight hours behind Malaysia. That puts the origin somewhere in western Africa, or perhaps a British territory like Saint Helena or Tristan da Cunha. But the use of Philippine pesos and the mention of Cebu Pacific suggest that someone may have been operating through the Philippines—or trying to make it look that way. Who knows? Syndicates can operate across continents these days.

So here’s my advice: (1) Monitor your bank and credit card SMSes closely, no matter what time they come in. (2) If anything looks off, contact the bank immediately. (3) Don’t assume fraud won’t happen to you just because you don’t shop online or use your card much. Sometimes, that makes you more vulnerable as you’re not watching as closely. And (4) finally, consider using virtual cards or turning off online access when you're not making purchases. It’s better to be paranoid than to be sorry.

We live in strange times. The fraudsters are getting smarter. So let’s not make their job any easier.

Nepal 2025, Day Six (III. Boudhanath stupa)

Okay, this was the big one for me. The original reason why I wanted to go to Nepal — to visit the Boudhanath Stupa in Kathmandu. One of the locations used in the film Little Buddha. After watching that film a few times, I’d been drawn to this stupa with its four pairs of Buddha’s eyes gazing out in all four directions. What could be cooler than that?

So after we left the Golden Temple in Patan, the next stop for our Nandaka Vihara group of travellers was Boudhanath. At first, I wasn’t even aware of where we were heading. I was just following our guide down a road, then we turned into a narrow passageway and suddenly, staring down on me from a distance, were the eyes. Oh, we’re here at last, I told Saw See. We waited rather impatiently for the tickets to be bought. Foreigners have to pay to enter, whereas locals can move in and out freely. That’s just how things are.

For a place I’d been dreaming about for years, Boudhanath didn’t disappoint. It was everything I’d imagined. Standing in the middle of Kathmandu’s chaos, it rises above the bustle like a giant, serene mandala. Calm, immovable, sacred. Boudhanath is not just a stupa. It’s one of the largest and most significant Buddhist monuments in the world. It’s been here for centuries, believed to date back to the fifth century AD, or possibly earlier. For hundreds of years it served as a key stop on the ancient trade route between Nepal and Tibet. Tibetan merchants would pause here to offer prayers before continuing their journeys over the mountains. No wonder this stupa has such deep connections to Tibetan Buddhism. Even today, it remains a central hub for the Tibetan refugee community in Nepal. You can feel that heritage all around.

The stupa’s massive white dome stood tall before us. And those iconic wisdom eyes that had drawn me here in the first place. Of course, they weren’t just decorative. They symbolised the Buddha’s omniscient gaze, watching over all sentient beings. Beneath the eyes, where the nose would be, was a curious symbol that looked like a question mark. It’s actually the Nepali number “1”, representing unity and the single path to enlightenment. Above that, rising into the sky, were thirteen gilded tiers — each one symbolising a step towards full awakening. And at the very top sat the symbolic canopy of Nirvana.

Around the base, colourful prayer flags fluttered in every direction. Monks, nuns, pilgrims and tourists moved about — most walking in clockwise circles, going with the flow, spinning the prayer wheels as they went. Now and then, one or two people insisted on going the other way, but by and large, the movement was smooth and steady. I noticed a few monks and lay pilgrims doing the full three-steps-one-prostration ritual around the stupa, a very slow but determined process with their bodies rising and falling with each cycle.

Boudhanath isn't just a monument; it’s alive. The air hummed with the low drone of chants, the clink of spinning wheels, the occasional beat of a drum and the unmistakable smell of incense. Monasteries and shops lined the circular path. One could browse handicrafts, or just stand quietly and take it all in. Mostly, I stood in awe. I was brought out of my reverie by my friends. We were going for coffee in one of those cafés on the first floor. Jolly good idea. From there, coffee in hand, I continued staring out the window at the two eyes — which stared calmly back at me. Inwardly, I felt cleansed.

This stupa was damaged during the 2015 earthquake, and the top had to be rebuilt. The restoration was meticulous and respectful. To see Boudhanath standing so strong now felt like a symbol of Nepal itself: shaken but unbroken.

And so, there I was. After years of watching Little Buddha, imagining what it would be like, I finally stood beneath those all-seeing eyes. The real thing wasn’t just cool. It was something else altogether — grounding, humbling, strangely emotional. I could have remained there for hours. But soon, it was time to move along.

Next: Day Seven (World peace centre)